Merrimack County Sheriff Scott Hilliard first heard about plans for the sprawling new courthouse on the Heights in casual conversation.
For years, officials had bemoaned the condition of Concord’s superior court, but efforts to renovate the aging two-story building on North Main Street or rebuild altogether had either failed or been set aside for more pressing state projects.
In January 2015, however, Hilliard heard in passing about a conceptual design for a new 35,000-square-foot replacement on Hazen Drive, across from the state Supreme Court. A few days later, he received the plans, part of a study commissioned by the state a year earlier.
“I brought it upstairs to our County Administrator Stephen Marro and said, ‘Have you seen this?’ ” Hilliard recalled. “And he said no.”
It was a critical moment for the county, and not only because it leases the courthouse to the state for $400,000 a year. A move even a few miles away would create a logistics nightmare for county prosecutors, who have relied on their proximity to the court to keep up with a growing caseload. The sheriff’s department, which runs its dispatch center out of the basement of the existing courthouse, faced a similar hurdle. And perhaps most pressing of all: Moving to the Heights could leave both the county and city with a gaping hole near the heart of downtown.
But over the next eight months, as legislators solicited ideas to keep the courthouse downtown and ultimately settled on Hazen Drive, the county never once raised its concerns publicly or offered an alternative plan.
It wasn’t until October that the county, with help from prominent Concord developer Steve Duprey, finally stepped forward with a last-minute plan: a proposal to renovate the existing courthouse, add much-needed parking, and do both in less time and for less money than the Hazen Drive option.
Against long odds, the effort narrowly passed last month in the House. As it moves to the Senate, officials from three levels of government are still trying to understand how a long-awaited capital project became so tangled in its final hour. Was the county to blame? Or was it just bad timing? Could there have been better communication between state and local officials?
“I really don’t know what happened,” Marro said in an interview last week. “It’s been a really enlightening process for me. I guess what I would say is, we need to be more active and aware of what goes on in the Legislature.”
Concerns about the state of the courthouse have been growing for at least a decade.
The 19th-century building is not entirely handicapped accessible. Parking, meeting space and holding cells are limited. There’s no secure entry for prisoners. A vending machine caught fire in February, resulting in extensive smoke and water damage.
State officials considered a move to the Hazen Drive site in the mid-2000s. In response, the now-defunct Concord 2020 wrote a report about possibilities to keep the courthouse downtown. City Manager Tom Aspell was on the nonprofit’s board of directors.
“We looked at every possible site,” Aspell said.
The first recommendation was simply to expand the existing courthouse. But the report considered several alternatives, including land on Storrs Street or the site of the New Hampshire Department of Employment Security on South Main Street.
Other capital projects – a complete renovation of Hillsborough County Superior Court North, a new superior court in Cheshire County, a soon-to-be-built women’s prison in Concord – delayed the courthouse in Concord.
But in January 2015, the judicial branch sent Gov. Maggie Hassan the same consultant report that Hilliard got. Commissioned by the state Department of Administrative Services, it envisioned a two-story, 35,000-square-foot courthouse on state land at the corner of Loudon Road and Hazen Drive.
Hassan agreed the project was a priority, but also knew the city had a stake in keeping it downtown as an economic driver. So, in part at the request of Concord Mayor Jim Bouley, she specified in her proposal a preference for a downtown site.
In the meantime, the city had just purchased the state Employment Security building on South Main Street. Duprey suggested building the courthouse there, utilizing new market tax credits to offset the price. The city toyed with the idea but backed out in the end, choosing instead to wait for a proposal that put the site back on its tax rolls.
With no word on another viable alternative, legislators removed Hassan’s suggestion and passed a capital budget with $16.6 million included for the Hazen Drive plan.
With the Employment Security prospect out of contention, Duprey figured his involvement had ended.
So he was surprised, he said, when Marro called last summer and asked whether he would share his team’s work on the South Main Street site.
“I said, ‘I’m happy to talk to you, but the new market tax credit zone doesn’t extend beyond Center Street, so all this analysis I did doesn’t apply,’ ” Duprey recalled in an interview. “At that point, (Marro) was just saying, we’ve just come to the realization that we’re going to lose this rent payment and we’re going to have an empty building.”
“In fairness to the county,” Duprey added, “I think they assumed that the city was taking a lead on it.”
Peter Spaulding, chairman of the Merrimack County board of commissioners, said the board had realized the concerns with the Hazen Drive design for the county attorney and sheriff, who were not consulted during the state’s study. The board was also struggling to account for the lost revenue if the state ended its lease, or what to do with a vacant courthouse on North Main Street.
“There was virtually no county involvement at the time,” Spaulding acknowledged.
Marro was still in his first year as the county’s new administrator when he contacted Duprey in July. He told him the county was scrambling for a solution.
“We were interested in pairing up with somebody,” Marro said, adding that Duprey “indicated he would be willing to work with the county.”
Duprey’s team quickly realized that parking would be a major hurdle downtown. The existing courthouse has only 113 parking spots – several dozen fewer than needed. But as he told lawmakers in a presentation in October, the nearby Stewart Nelson Plaza with TD Bank had just become available, and had plenty of spots.
“There is no issue, if you go that route, about parking,” Duprey explained to members of the Senate capital budget committee, noting that the parking had been key to making his plan work.
Duprey walked out of the presentation again thinking his involvement was done. In reality, it was the beginning of a months-long campaign to sway lawmakers that the idea is both financially prudent and logistically sensible.
Duprey estimates he has spent about $50,000 on the work so far, with no immediate expectation to be reimbursed. Of course, he has a potential commercial stake if the downtown project goes forward and he is selected as the developer (he said his team plans to submit a bid this month). But Duprey continues to insist that he is not gunning for the project and hopes the county chooses the best plan, even if it’s not his.
“In the long run, this is good for Concord, it’s good for the county . . . and it’s good for the state of New Hampshire,” he said.
After six years of lobbying for a new courthouse, Rep. Gene Chandler saw Duprey’s plan as too little, too late.
The Republican from Bartlett serves as the chairman of the House public works committee, and said he gave more than enough time for the city or anyone else to come up with a plan for a downtown site.
“I don’t care where the damn thing is built – just that it gets built,” Chandler said. “And my fear is that somehow that doesn’t happen, and that we’ll lose another construction season. In hindsight, we shouldn’t have given the city as much time and as many chances that we did.”
Early 2015 was a transitional time for the Merrimack County. Marro started the county administrator position in October 2014. A recent election had added Tara Reardon to the board of commissioners and turned over some seats in the county delegation.
But by the time Chandler’s committee voted early this year to kill the downtown courthouse bill, Merrimack County and city officials were fully immersed in their efforts to keep the courthouse downtown. The county hired Hinckley Allen attorney Richard Uchida to handle pages of questions from lawmakers and the state Department of Administrative Services.
In response to concerns from court and state officials, Duprey’s design has changed. Rather than renovation the existing courthouse, he is now proposing a two-story courthouse where the parking lot stands now. The current courthouse would be converted to office space for the county sheriff and attorney, and nearby Pitman Street would need to be reconfigured to add parking – not the Stewart Nelson Plaza, as Duprey had planned.
The county has also built in reassurances for the state. For example, the clerk can stop construction at any given time if it is disrupting court operations. The county would also be on the hook for any overspending on the project, and at the end, the state would take over ownership of the courthouse.
If successful, this partnership – a private developer and a county government constructing a state building – would be unprecedented.
“With all due respect to the Legislature, they’re not used to this,” Uchida said. “Us convincing them this is a process that will work has probably been the most challenging aspect.”
The Merrimack County delegation – led by two Democrats, Pembroke Rep. Dianne Schuett and Concord Rep. Steve Shurtleff – lobbied their colleagues on the floor to overturn the recommendation from Chandler’s committee. They credited Bouley and Aspell for supporting the project as well.
“Our argument was, just because an opportunity comes a little late doesn’t mean you should ignore it,” Schuett said.
The bill passed the House on March 11, and next will go to the Senate capital budget committee. A hearing has not yet been scheduled.
“I think the legislators were right to criticize the county for being late to the ballgame,” Uchida said. “Part of our pitch has been that we’ve had to apologize for that, and we’ve had to do that upfront because I know this whole project has caused a sense of discomfort among those who are thinking responsibly in the Legislature.”
Proponents of a downtown courthouse are cautiously optimistic about the path forward. But looking back, they have varying reviews of the process that got them here.
“What can we learn from this going forward to help make these processes smoother?” Hilliard, the county sheriff, said. “I really think we need a better line of communication.”
“Clearly, we have to work all together,” Spaulding said. “I think the county and the city have had a very good relationship throughout this.”
“The idea isn’t bad, it’s just the timing was terrible,” Chandler said, adding: “I just know we’re not to blame.”
(Megan Doyle can be reached at 369-3321, mdoyle@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @megan_e_doyle. Jeremy Blackman can be reached at 369-3319, jblackman@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @JBlackmanCM.)