EVERETT — While the Snohomish County Council held off Monday on any big decisions about courthouse construction, one thing was clear: time is of the essence.
And there’s not much time left.
Council members said they hope within the next week or two to decide what to do about the impasse with Everett over parking. The conflict is threatening to implode the $162 million project.
County and city staff met last week to establish how to fulfill the city’s requirement for hundreds of parking spaces not in current courthouse designs. They’re scheduled to meet again Thursday.
“They get that we need a decision and we need a decision quick,” said Jason Cummings, the county’s chief civil deputy prosecuting attorney.
The county had hoped to break ground on the project later this year, but that’s now in doubt.
It’s up to council members to decide what to do: Add parking to the current courthouse designs or build the courthouse somewhere else.
There’s even talk of scrapping the project altogether.
“It’s something I’m taking a serious look at,” Councilman Terry Ryan said after Monday’s meeting.
“Definitely something to be considered,” Councilwoman Stephanie Wright said.
Bringing the project to a dead stop won’t be cheap, either. The county has spent $7 million so far, more than half of that to buy out a half-dozen properties in the proposed footprint.
On top of those costs, county analysts also are trying to get a better read on how much it would cost to pay interest obligations on bonds the county has sold to fund the project.
Figures in the millions of dollars were being batted about Monday, but also couched as educated guesses.
“If we’re not working with the same set of numbers, we can’t make a good decision,” Ryan said.
The longer county leaders wait, the more they can expect costs to grow — without anything to show for it.
Every month of delay will add an estimated $193,000 to the project’s costs, mostly because of the market forces driving up prices, county staff said.
For now, the county is trying to establish with Everett planners the exact number of parking spaces they’ll have to provide and in what form.
To help meet the goal, the county could clear extra space in its existing underground garage by parking 115 fleet vehicles somewhere else, facilities director Mark Thunberg wrote to city planning director Allan Giffen last week.
Because there’s no money to build a new parking garage, the county’s only realistic option for new parking spaces would be a surface lot on the site of the old courthouse once it’s demolished, Thunberg said.
The county also is asking for leeway on previous parking agreements with the city, because staffing at the main campus has fallen about 100 people short of projected levels.
Giffen wrote back that the county’s suggestions are worth discussing.
The County Council plans to keep the courthouse on its agenda every Monday until a course of action is clear.
Throughout 2014, representatives from the administrations of Mayor Ray Stephanson and County Executive John Lovick met to discuss how a larger redevelopment initiative could tie in with the courthouse project. Stephanson’s office suggested a makeover along part of Hewitt Avenue, an area that would be on the back side of the future courthouse. The concept called for street-level shops at the base of a large parking structure.
The mayor said he was clear about requiring the new court building to provide parking, even though city zoning when the project was proposed required none.
Instead, the county went ahead with designs to build the eight-story building with 30 to 40 restricted parking spaces for judges and other court staff.
Lovick’s administration has contended that the new courthouse will merely replace the 1967 one that will eventually be torn down.
The proposed courthouse also would take out an existing lot with 130 surface parking spaces. Everett officials contend the county failed to fulfill a 2002 agreement about downtown parking as a condition of building a new jail and administration building.
On Christmas Eve, the Everett City Council passed an emergency ordinance to require more than 300 parking spaces in the new building. Without any contingency in the courthouse budget, county leaders say they’d be hard-pressed to find the $20 million to $45 million it would cost to build a parking garage with that much capacity.
Noah Haglund: 425-339-3465, nhaglund@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @NWhaglund.
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