The Carroll County Quorum Court’s Eastern District Judicial Building Steering Committee is recommending that County Judge David Writer spend approximately $200,000 to solicit a bid package for a new structure near the Carroll County Law Enforcement Complex on Hailey Road in Berryville.
The recommendation came after committee members along with Writer and County Clerk Connie Doss toured the former Walmart complex on Trimble Avenue in Berryville. District 11 Justice of the Peace John Howerton, who chairs the committee, said the owners of the complex are willing to sell the property for $3 million and that purchasing it might be a viable alternative to new construction.
The complex includes approximately 20,000 square feet that is not currently occupied as well as approximately 26,000 square feet that is divided into smaller spaces and occupied through lease agreements with terms ranging from month-tomonth to more than 20 years.
Howerton said an architect and construction manager had visited the complex and were impressed with its condition.
Howerton said the lease agreements would provide approximately $165,000 a year in net revenue that the county could use to make payments on money it would need to borrow to finance the purchase and renovation of the former Walmart building.
“So you look at those numbers and if we were to buy that, that income of roughly $160,000 a year would make about half of the payment that we would have to borrow … ,” Howerton said. “If we just used our courthouse fund to buy that, that would wipe the courthouse fund out and we would have to wait until basically we got that million dollars paid back to the bank before the rent would allow us to start doing work on the building.”
The former Walmart complex also includes the free-standing building currently occupied by an AT&T store, Howerton said.
“The AT&T building stands out there by itself,” he said. “It could be sold off. The property manager says that that parcel is worth about a million and a half. That’s to be determined. Saying all that … it looks like to do upgrades to the building, to get a courtroom facility in it, we would still have $1 million to work toward that goal, if we sold that frontage property out there with the AT&T building on it. All that’s the judge’s decision. He’s going to look to us to make a recommendation and again the rest of the quorum court will have to go along because this is a long-term financial obligation that the county would be entering into.”
Howerton said Carroll County Circuit Judge Scott Jackson had expressed reservations about security if the former Walmart space was used to house a courtroom.
District 6 JP Craig Hicks, a Berryville police officer, agreed that security could be an issue and said he’d been contacted by a well-respected local attorney, whom Hicks did not identify, who shared the same concerns as Jackson.
Hicks suggested that eventually the circuit courtroom could be moved across the street from its current location to the “courthouse annex,” which currently houses the Berryville Public Library as well as some county offices including the assessor’s and tax collector’s offices. A fundraising drive is under way to help pay for the construction of a new library.
“I just don’t like the idea of a courtroom or circuit court being right there next to the Walmart,” Hicks said.
Ultimately, committee members were of the opinion that a new building near the law enforcement complex, which houses the sheriff’s office and the county jail, is a more viable option.
An architect and construction manager presented cost projections to the committee earlier this year. The projected cost for a 5,632-square-foot building that would house a courtroom as well as office space for the circuit judge and staff is approximately $4.1 million, about $729 per square foot, although committee members noted that the architect and contractor intentionally built in contingencies for inflation and other factors, meaning there is a chance that actual bids might come in significantly lower.
“I still believe that it’ll come it at ($3 million),” Howerton said. “I think they’ve over-guessed it, a third. But they do this every day, so how could they miss it that bad?”
Howerton said the decision on whether to solicit a bid package is up to Writer. He noted that the county has more than $1 million set aside in a separate fund and added that if bids come in too high, the county has the option of re-bidding the project at a later date.
