CCDC Approves $20 Million for New Courthouse : Redevelopment: Money would help pay for $83-million building to complement downtown’s aging structure.

The agency in charge of downtown redevelopment voted Friday to provide $20 million toward the construction of a downtown courthouse that would supplement, but not replace, the 30-year-old structure on Broadway, which is plagued by bugs, rats, sewage leaks and asbestos.

The Centre City Development Corp. voted unanimously to provide $800,000 a year for 25 years for an $83-million building that would include 16 Superior Court courtrooms and offices for the district attorney.

The county has identified funds for most, but not all, of the $63-million difference and is looking to developers for the rest, a county report indicates.

The financial proposal must next earn county approval, and the Board of Supervisors is due to review the plan Tuesday.

Though virtually all other details of the project, including the site, remain unclear, the emergence of the proposal marks a sharp turn in court-planning strategy.

County planners, who in recent years have tried stopgap solutions such as hotels or weight rooms for the severely crowded courts, said they have switched focus to the long term.

“We’re doing things more permanently,” said Rich Robinson, director of the county Office of Special Projects, which plans for court and jail space.

Anticipating 2010, planners see the 16-court building as part of a plan that also calls for a downtown criminal courts building and, eventually, the renovation of the Broadway courthouse or construction of a new main building, Robinson said Friday in an interview.

The strategy switch was quietly triggered last April when a plan to build nine downtown Superior Court courtrooms at the El Cortez Hotel Convention Center fell through, according to county and CCDC documents.

The plan received a boost after tests two months ago turned up asbestos at the Hotel San Diego, across Broadway from the existing courthouse, where temporary space had been leased for seven Superior Courts and two Municipal Courts. The courts left the hotel immediately.

“We have a current critical shortage of space,” said Judge Arthur Jones, the assistant presiding judge of Superior Court. “If you project that into a few more years, you can identify that we need another 15 courts downtown,” which would likely be civil courtrooms, to take advantage of recent court rule changes mandating speedy civil trials, Jones said Friday.

“Just taking people out of broom closets and weight rooms and putting them into real courtrooms now, and anticipating the growth . . . over the next five to seven years, we will need this building,” Jones said. “We will be out of space again if we don’t have this building.”

To renovate the Broadway courthouse or build a substitute for its 5 dozen courtrooms--which are divided roughly into 35 Superior Court courtrooms and 25 Municipal Court courtrooms--would cost $400 million to $600 million, Robinson said.

About $325 million already has been collected in the 3 1/2 years since county voters approved a half-cent sales tax for new courts and jails. But the money is waiting in an interest-bearing bank account while a legal battle over the measure’s legality is being waged.

After hearing oral arguments last month, the California Supreme Court has two more months to announce its verdict on the measure, called Proposition A.

Including $5 million for 289 parking spaces, the 16-court building is projected to cost $83 million, county documents indicate.

Because it doesn’t need Proposition A funds, the 16-court proposal is an especially good one, said John G. Davies, a San Diego lawyer and president of CCDC, a quasi-public agency.

The current courthouse is a “blight,” Davies said Friday after the agency’s unanimous vote, but added, “Realistically, at this time we’re not going to build a new courthouse. This is the best we’re going to do.”

Even if Proposition A money was available, Davies said, “Like anything else in the public process, things take time. The process is not quick. A new courthouse is a long-term project. And this will be useful in the interim.”

Under terms of the CCDC vote, the $20 million will be paid out starting when the building is done. CCDC requires that the county maintain a significant number of Superior and Municipal Court courtrooms downtown, rather than spreading judges around the suburbs.

CCDC is financing the deal through revenue it receives from the Columbia Redevelopment Project, an area mainly of office buildings roughly centered on the West Broadway spine of downtown.

In a report to supervisors, county planners urged the board to require that the 16-court structure be built within three blocks of the existing downtown courthouse, saying a greater distance would pose logistic problems. Four developers report they can build within three blocks, planners said.