GREENFIELD — After three years in temporary quarters, the Franklin County Courthouse has opened in its permanent home on Hope Street.
The Franklin County Criminal Justice Center opened quietly Monday morning after a $60 million renovation that began in February 2014. The bulk of the move from the courthouse’s temporary location on Munson Street was completed Friday, but employees continued to unpack leftover boxes throughout Monday morning and familiarize themselves with the new building.
“At this point, I think everybody is loving their new surroundings, but we’re trying to get acclimated, we’re trying to get unpacked, we’re trying to figure out what’s working, what isn’t working,” Franklin County Clerk of Courts Susan Emond said. “It comes with anything new — it’s going to take a little bit of time, but for the most part, the general feeling is everybody’s thrilled — how could we not be in a big, beautiful new building?”
State-of-the-art technology in the building’s six courtrooms is expected to improve access to judges by allowing hearings to be held easily over video conference, as well as accuracy and transparency during court proceedings. The courthouse is also the first in the state to have WiFi for visitors.
The new Justice Center includes the historic front of the 1935 courthouse building, with a 104,00-square-foot, three-story addition over what had been its “el” wing and parking lot. It houses all five court departments, the Law Library and the Registry of Deeds, which is expected to open in March. It also replaces the leased Main Street juvenile and housing court facilities.
“We’re 90 percent moved in, really,” Register of Probate John Merrigan said. “We’re finding all kinds of quirks — phone jacks on the wrong side of the office or having to run extension cords from one side of the office to another. We have a good facilities crew here that’s been hired, and we’ll look work through those kinks.”
On Monday morning, a handful of litigants sat scattered across wooden benches in the second-floor District Court arraignments courtroom, while others waited on benches outside in the sunny hallway. The building’s three-story addition features a ground-to-roof glass wall facing Hope Street, as well as orange accent walls and colorful carpets that give it a modern feel.
On Monday, District Court was the only court in session.
“This morning was really the big push to start getting organized,” Emond said. “District Court really needs to get organized as quickly as possible because they have court every day, they have emergencies that they deal with every day.”
Superior Court won’t have its first hearing until Thursday, so Emond said that department will have a little more time to get settled.
On the building’s third floor, litigants, attorneys and law enforcement officials filed in and out of the Clerk’s Office, which houses District, Superior and Housing courts in a shared space.
“Everything is open — whether we can find what we need to help somebody quickly is a different story,” Emond said. “By the end of the week, you shouldn’t even be able to tell we came in here this morning.”
In the new space, Emond said modern technology is one of the biggest functional changes. In the Probate courtroom on the third floor, two large flat screen monitors are attached to the wall behind the bench, and cameras throughout the room allow a judge to appear by video conference.
“In our case, we could hold a hearing with a judge from another county if we didn’t have that judge in,” Merrigan said. “We do get emergencies come in and we have to have them heard somehow. Before, we’d roll in a portable video system. Now we can do it right here without having to move people around.”
The Superior courtroom on the fourth floor is also high-tech, with flat screens on the walls, in the jury box and attached to other stands and benches throughout the room. The system is controlled by the clerk, who can project a document or photo to any screen in the room during a hearing or trial. Emond said, for example, it will allow sensitive material, such as autopsy photos, to only be displayed to jurors and kept out of the general public’s view.
The system will also allow users to make annotations on a screen, save them and produce them as evidence later.
“It has the ability to really make our lives a lot easier and our record a lot clearer and more concise here in Superior Court,” Emond said. “There’s no other courtrooms in the country that have everything we have right now, so we’re really going to be piloting it.”
Merrigan said additional meeting space in the new building is also an asset. There are four pretrial conference rooms outside of the Probate courtroom and two outside of the Superior courtroom, where litigants can confer with their attorneys and other courthouse staff.
“It’s private and people are able to talk — before, people would make those meetings happen in the hallway,” he said.
On the ground floor to the right of the main entrance is the Court Service Center, where unrepresented litigants can get help filling out paperwork and find information about other resources, such as housing, transportation, substance abuse treatment and more.
“Oftentimes, the reason people are in court is not having access to resources in the community,” said Mary Klaes, manager of the Court Service Center.
The Opioid Task Force, which does education and outreach about the opioid epidemic, is located adjacent to that space.
“This is the first time we’re in the same space as the Court Service Center, which is really great because when people come here to get help from Mary for legal issues, if they happen to be struggling with substance disorder also, we’re right here and we can offer all of our resources, as well,” said Tess Jurgensen, operations coordinator for the Opioid Task Force.
The new building also includes a large jury pool room, a separate area for Juvenile Court that can be closed off for privacy reasons, separate hallways and elevators for defendants in custody, employees, jurors and the public, as well as holding cells and a drive-in “sally port” to securely transport prisoners.
Emond added that courthouse employees are glad to be back downtown.
“It’s great to be back home. We’re happy about that,” she said. “Although we loved our home on Munson Street, this is where we belong.”