BY JENNIFER BECKNELL
jbecknell@enquirerherald.com
When the York County Courthouse opens next year as planned, project leaders aim to see it restored as closely as possible to the way it was 101 years ago.
Renovation plans for the $7.3 million project, to be done by Leitner Construction Co. of Rock Hill, call for reusing and restoring original materials as much as possible, said James Britton, an executive with Cumming Construction Management, hired by the county to manage the project.
“The intent is to do the least damage,” Britton said.
“We are rebuilding the interior,” Britton said. “We are restoring the exterior. We are restoring the doors, the floors, and where we have to do new floors, we are going to match the materials.”
The York County Council last week approved hiring Leitner as the low bidder, paving the way for the 1914 building on Congress Street to once again host court proceedings and county offices.
Completion of the renovations will end a long-running, and at times imperiled, effort to keep the courthouse up and running.
Britton told the council the bid awarded to Leitner is more than $460,000 less than what was budgeted for the project, which is scheduled to be complete by Aug. 31, 2016. York city leaders hope it can be open for the city’s Summerfest in late August.
Britton said the exterior of the courthouse will look the same as it does now, though a new entrance is being added on the Agricultural Building side to make the building accessible to the disabled, as is required under federal law.
He said the brick will be cleaned and copper restored, and an old town crier porch on the Liberty Street side, once used to announce that court was in session, will be restored.
Inside the building, he said the large multi-story palladium windows will be cleaned and restored, while some other less significant windows will be replaced. “But when it’s said and done, you won’t be able to tell the difference between a replacement and what was there before,” he said.
New restrooms and two new elevators are being added to meet building codes, he said, and a dumbwaiter is being added to carry heavy evidence files to the fourth floor for storage.
Inside, Britton said, every effort will be made to reuse existing materials. “We are not taking down the marble wainscoting just to put up something else. We are not taking down the old door frames, we’re reusing them, we are going to restore them.”
Although some of the original corridor walls still remain, Britton said, the layout of the building will change.
Britton said Cumming worked with York city leaders and members of the Yorkville Historical Society, who lobbied to save the courthouse, in discussing plans for the renovation.
“We included all of the shareholders in the York community,” he said.
The courthouse has been shuttered for four years while on-and-off work has been done to upgrade and modernize the building. Legal proceedings and county employees were moved from the building while lead-based paint and asbestos were stripped from the walls, and workers began abatement work to remove mold.
But work stalled when cost projections overran what the county had put aside for completion of the project. York County had designated $5.3 million to bring the building up to the standards of a 21st-century government building, with extra office space, security features and handicapped accessibility, but later architectural estimates put the cost at closer to $11.2 million.
For a time, county officials considered permanently closing the building, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and moving all court functions to the Moss Justice Center just outside the city limits.
Cumming Construction Management was hired to review the project last year and adjusted the projected renovation costs down to $9.1 million, including $1.5 million already spent.
County Council Chairman Britt Blackwell acknowledged the advocacy of the city of York but says credit for saving the courthouse goes to the Cumming staff.
“They showed through their due diligence that it was more cost effective to the taxpayer than moving to a new structure,” Blackwell said.
In addition to Leitner’s base bid of $7 million, the council approved four additional projects – adding an emergency power generator, $93,000; adding a dumbwaiter, to move heavier items between floors, $37,000; creating a new entrance at the adjacent Agricultural Building’s parking lot, $19,000; and putting up a canopy for the new entrance, $97,500.
The Herald’s Bristow Marchant contributed to this story.
Jennifer Becknell: 803-329-4077