Observations from last visit in Jax

[duvaldude08]

I never thought the courthouse looked bad.

+1

It was gonna get criticized by most no matter what, because it went over-budget. I betcha if any of those others plans came to life, and was over budget, people still would come up with 'trendy' put-down terms; The place the Peyton Built, Taj Mahal, blah blah blah. I don't think that it's nearly as bad as many are making it out to be. I laugh at some of the examples posted in the past of other cities Courthouses' that supposed are better than ours; For example, Charlotte has a monstrosity. I predict that the area around the courthouse will get built up with possible relocated bail bondsmen offices' etc. watch.

I just googled a picture and yes. Charolette's courthouse is.........unique.. AKA extremely ugly. It does not even look like a courthouse. Im not sure what it looks like. I would have preferred ours to be a bit different, but its there now and finally built. So I will embrace it in all its ugliness 

[thelakelander]

I'm actually fine with Charlotte's because it comes right up against the street and it doesn't eat up extra blocks of downtown.  Coming in at $148 million, it also cost a fraction of what ours did.   Last but not least, it includes 10,000 square feet of retail space at street level.  I'd take a bland office building at $148 million that fits a compact site right, instead of a $350 million out of scale structure that doesn't, any day.

[simms3]

I won't judge by having seen it in person, but only by the pics Lakelander just put up, but Charlotte's Courthouse is actually quite decent.  I'm not sure who the architect of ours is, but that architect should be disbanded from AIA and fired from his job.  Our courthouse is not only an insult to neoclassicism, it is out of scale, out of context, and there is not one redeeming factor to it.  I can't believe there are people who would disagree, because I thought that was established before it even started coming out of the ground.  I'd happily take ANY of the designs from the original competition, and Cannon did a much better job with its neoclassical design (there was another one by a group called Spindela or something like that).

Now we have what we have and it will stick out like a sore thumb for decades because nothing is going to be built around it that could possibly conceal its ugliness.  Put it on its side and it would easily be one of the tallest buildings in the skyline.

[I-10east]

I guess that 'fine' and 'decent' must be synonyms for 'austere' and 'drab' concerning Charlotte's courthouse. This new Duval courthouse was gonna be a 'no-win' with most of the local general public as soon as it went over budget anyways; Even if it looked like the Capitol Building in DC. Yall might as well get used to it, because it's not going anywhere in our lifetimes. I'm 'really' looking forward to the new 'objective' thread articles when this thing opens. 

[Tacachale]

^The Mecklenberg County Courthouse is an eyesore, but its problems don't begin to compare to ours. While the budget overruns obviously soured peoples' opinions of our courthouse regardless of how it looked, what you're missing is that 1). it's still hideous at whatever price and 2). if Peyton hadn't thrown out the original design and completed work, it wouldn't have gone so far over budget. Some of the cost overruns weren't Peyton's fault, but it was his decision to throw out the original design and start over that gave us the monstrosity as we have it today.

[Adam W]

I won't judge by having seen it in person, but only by the pics Lakelander just put up, but Charlotte's Courthouse is actually quite decent.  I'm not sure who the architect of ours is, but that architect should be disbanded from AIA and fired from his job.  Our courthouse is not only an insult to neoclassicism, it is out of scale, out of context, and there is not one redeeming factor to it.  I can't believe there are people who would disagree, because I thought that was established before it even started coming out of the ground.  I'd happily take ANY of the designs from the original competition, and Cannon did a much better job with its neoclassical design (there was another one by a group called Spindela or something like that).

Now we have what we have and it will stick out like a sore thumb for decades because nothing is going to be built around it that could possibly conceal its ugliness.  Put it on its side and it would easily be one of the tallest buildings in the skyline.

+1

[RockStar]

Spinal Tap on the new courthouse:

Nigel Tufnel: It's like, how much more beige could this be? and the answer is none. None more beige...

[cityimrov]

The Charlotte courthouse looks like a regular office building and a much better sight knowing it only cost $148 million compared to $350 million.  How did they get one for only $148 million? 

At least we're resurfacing our major roads like Roosevelt Blvd with asphalt instead of concrete.

Are you sure? Maybe I am being dense, but it looks like crete not asphalt. They don't come back and smooth out asphalt, do they? I sure hope that's not asphalt on I-95 South near JTB, you crack your teeth on that stuff.

The detour around the bridge is not worth the added expense of building a foundry to make parts once every 5 years.  I'd rather have a true manufacturing city make them anyway, allows us to defer liability to someone else. Eddie and Chuck would agree.

Agree.. the stretch of Roosevelt from San Juan to I-10 is all concrete.. some places have been re poured and all of it has been resurfaced..sort of shaved off of the top of the concrete making it smooth to drive on again...done a nice job with it so far.

If that's the case then I was mistaken. 

[tufsu1]

The Charlotte courthouse looks like a regular office building and a much better sight knowing it only cost $148 million compared to $350 million.  How did they get one for only $148 million? 

keep in mind that our new courthouse is costing roughly $225 million to construct...the remainder is for renovations to the old Federal courthouse, building the garage, and buying the land

[I-10east]

No one is denying that the Duval County Courthouse went over budget, yall are preaching to the choir with that, I said it like three times already on this thread. Lets do a lil' quick fact check in comparing to two totally different courthouses in Charlotte, and Jax.

Building_____________Year Completed______Sq Footage_________No. of Courtrooms

Mecklenburg County Courthouse___2006__________568,000___________________34

Duval County Courthouse________2012__________850,000____________________51

Not even close, so this highly overblown 'we could have used only 148M for our courthouse' argument is just a load of BS. Go on ahead and rehash on the cost of the courthouse again, and mention the so called 'totally suburban' design (it's really urban, but whatever).

[simms3]

Just did the math.  We actually still paid a little bit more per courtroom - just using the $225M figure, which excludes the cost of land (which the city overpaid), the garage (which does not get used and is a cash cow), and the old courthouse renovations.

On a per SF basis we also paid more than Charlotte by $4, again using the $225M figure.

That is hilarious that even simple math shows that we got very little for what we paid for (or perhaps we actually got way too much when you think about the absolute dollar figure and how much we constructed).

It should also be noted that Mecklenburg County is now larger and growing MUCH MUCH faster than Duval County.  Do we really need a good 50% more courtrooms and 50% more space (Not counting the additional space and rooms in the renovated building)

This 60 second evaluation allowed me to easily point out how absurd our courthouse is from a numbers standpoint.  When $350M of taxpayer money is on the line, it should NOT be that easy for an average citizen to run 3 quick calculations and come up with the answers I came up with.  If there is doubt over the spending, it should not be that easily warranted and backed up.

[simms3]

These are county courthouses my friend.  Duval County CH and Mecklenburg County CH.  Also, Charlotte's city population isn't that much smaller than ours now.  They'll surpass sooner rather than later.

Edit: Just noticed your post disappeared for some reason.

[PhanLord]

Duval County Population : 864,263
Mecklenburg County Population: 919,628

[I-10east]

^^^Yeah yall got me, I tried to act like that post didn't happen and delete, but I got caught slippin LOL. Anyway, I find it hard to believe that those courtrooms are not gonna be used resourcefully at the new DCC.  I'm done with this courthouse battle talk, I really can't wait for those future five threads all rehashing on what a disaster we have when it opens.

[thelakelander]

+1 Simms3.  Local pride is one thing but people are wasting their time trying to validate this thing.  It's here and we'll have to live with it and plan to integrate it into the surrounding area but trying to validate how it got to this point is useless.