Happenings Around Town
1/15/2008: Courts Building Opens to Raves
Jurors sat in what used to be a closet in a makeshift courtroom, some unable to see the judge or witness stand. Shackled inmates shuffled through the same halls the public and judges used. With no metal detectors or surveillance cameras, security was scarce.
Those troubles disappeared Monday with the opening of a new 41-B District Court building to serve Mt.Clemens and Clinton and Harrison townships.
The $13.5-million building near Groesbeck and Elizabeth in Clinton Township has a spacious lobby with cherry furniture, posh chambers for judges, a jury room with two flat-screen TVs on the wall and high-tech surveillance with metal detectors.
Its 46,000 square feet dwarfs the combined size of the two old courthouses, in Clinton Township and Mt. Clemens.
The jury box is spacious, and inmates are escorted down a locked hallway. "It has exceeded our expectations," Judge Sebastian Lucido said Monday. "It really is beautiful." The other judges are Linda Davis and Sheila Miller.
Court officials say the former courthouses could no longer accommodate the rapid growth in the district, which translated into more crimes. The population grew from 114,900 in 1980 to 140,400 today, according to the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments.
The courthouse won't cost a dime in tax dollars, judges said, because the bond is paid off by fines and court costs imposed on defendants. Room was so scarce in the former courthouses that clerks kept archived records in four locations, one of them on the top floor of the Mt. Clemens fire station.
"It was a real nightmare," said Kim Silvestro, the court administrator. "It will take us a couple months to move all those records here." But it's all worth it, court officials said. The project required dozens of volunteers to meet during lunch or after work. They wanted something practical yet elegant.
"A lot of planning and hard work was put into this," Lucido said. "It was a great effort by a lot of people."