When the new Franklin County Justice Center is formally dedicated on April 7, many will recall that the $66 million construction project was a lot longer than the planned three years in the making.
And the neoclassical brick courthouse facade, with its columns marking the former Main Street entrance with the inscription, “Law Secures Liberty Without License” above its sealed doors, is a constant reminder of the era that went before — along with sandblasted brick along the interior stairway, where old and new buildings join.
That older courthouse, with its 1931 cornerstone, once had doorknobs with a County of Franklin logo and the county’s 1811 incorporation date. They tell of a structure owned by the county that controlled the courts until the Commonwealth of Massachusetts took over 1979.
But for all of its ornate brass and marble accoutrements, the old 46,000-square-foot courthouse was cramped, with only 27,000 square feet of usable space in grand courtrooms, hallways and foyers. There was little privacy for attorney-client conferences, a crowded district court corridor shared by defendants and victims, court personnel and witnesses, and a makeshift lockup area that doubled as a file room.
“I can’t tell you how many violent physical acts and attacks occurred in that hallway, because you had people on either side of a dispute,” said lawyer John Stobierski, who once served as a Franklin County Commissioner and who co-chaired the first, seven-member courthouse advisory committee in 2000.
“It was really almost dehumanizing as you had to run the gauntlet, with people out there crying, worried, mad, mentally disturbed. It was kind of a scary place sometime (with) people in shackles sitting on the bench or coming down the hall” to or from the windowless file room where they were handcuffed to a bench until cells could be installed. “It really was barbaric for the institution of administration of justice, just like our jail was a barbaric institution for housing inmates” before the county replaced its 1886 jail a decade ago.
A roof that leaked so badly that it sparked an electrical fire in late 1997, and then caused the ceiling to buckle over the superior courtroom’s jury box — along with mildew problems that caused allergic reactions in the district courtroom — finally led to a push for a new courthouse.
A 1992 “Reinventing Justice” study — the result of a two-year series of hearings and meetings to address how the court system would be needed to address social ills 30 years into the future — pointed to a user-friendly “community justice center,” where a unified court system and human services agencies could converge. The idea of a comprehensive community center, including on-site child care and branches of the Registry of Motor Vehicles and other agencies, became part of the vision for what should replace the old courthouse
Former Greenfield District Court Judge Thomas T. Merrigan, who co-chaired the Reinventing Justice committee along with Greenfeld lawyer Diane Esser, recalls, “We had hoped perhaps for a Registry of Motor Vehicles service center, maybe a Department of Social Services (now Department of Child and Families) service center so there could be a lot more interaction between (court) consumers who have business where those issues could be conducted under one roof. We were trying to create more accessible one-stop shopping for those things.”
While the new justice center doesn’t include some of those once-imagined features, Merrigan said it does include “a lot more privacy” as well as more shared space for court and court-related staff and a “less confusing, more accessible and more functional” experience for the public.
His brother, Register of Probate and Family Court John F. Merrigan, noted that for most people who use the judicial system, “It’s as intimidating as hell. A lot of people who come in here are facing trauma. … They want to get out the door.”
So the design included creating more user-friendly courtrooms, with a resource center and branches of Division of Youth Services and other agencies seen as helpful to have under the same roof. That called for a “community justice center” that was at first envisioned as four times the size of the 1930s courthouse.
There wasn’t unanimity about where to put a new courthouse, seen in 2000 as a $34 million, 162,000-square-foot structure. Other sites eyed included the former Greenfield Tap and Die factory location at Deerfield and Meridian streets — now the home of The Arbors — as well as the Bank Row bank building, one on Olive Street, near Greenfield Community College and the jail on Elm Street.
While one faction was intent on keeping at least part of the historic courthouse building intact, inadequate parking near the existing site conflicted with those who argued on the importance of retaining a new justice center near downtown.
Looking back, Stobierski says, “I’m just so thrilled that it’s still downtown, and that everybody throughout the process kept digging in their heels, saying it has to be downtown.”
There was consensus that the old building couldn’t be retrofitted, he recalls, and the state strongly opposed using the existing site.
The process in 2001 and 2002 — which promised that a new courthouse could be in place by 2005 — grew so contentious, with concerns about the lack of parking, that Greenfield lost out to competition from other courthouse projects across the state. It wasn’t until a new $3 billion state capital bond was approved in 2008 that a smaller expansion was approved.
The new, more functional and daylight-enhanced space that opened Feb. 6 brings together all courthouse functions — including the juvenile and housing courts, district attorney’s offices and, sometime later this spring, the Registry of Deeds. Those agencies were scattered around Greenfield during the three-year construction.
While the new, five-story building isn’t the giant, one-stop center first imagined as a way to “reinvent justice,” the general consensus is that — once Greenfield’s four-story, 350-space parking garage is built — it will be ultimately a just solution for the courts, the Council of Governments, and for Franklin County.
You can reach Richie Davis at rdavis@recorder.com
or 413-772-0261, ext. 269