Bronx Courthouse Problems Are “Crystal Clear”
The recently opened Bronx County Hall of Justice may be an “architect’s dream,” but the $421-million design marvel that made its debut two years behind schedule is giving its workers and visitors nagging headaches.
The glass building doesn’t have enough private booths for attorney-client conferences in either the area designated for the Department of Correction, where prisoners are temporarily held, or in the courtrooms.
One of the courthouse’s main entrance doors is boarded up after its glass facade was shattered by a strong wind shortly after the courthouse opened on Jan. 28.
Two of its staircases and a parking garage are closed because of safety issues, there was a leak in the jury room and attorneys sometimes have to hoof it the entire length of the courthouse — the equivalent of two city blocks — between courtrooms.
“This building is an architect’s dream,” said Giovanni Rosania, 26, a defense attorney in the Bronx, “but it’s not a practical contribution.”
Designed by Rafael Viñoly Architects, the 775,000-square-foot courthouse, which extends over two city blocks, was supposed to open in 2005 at a cost of around $300 million.
Two years and an additional $121 million later, the courthouse and its 47 courtrooms are now open, but a lot of work remains to be done.
“The building as designed and constructed is state-of-the-art and meets the needs of the criminal justice system as well as those of the immediate Bronx community,” Jay Bargmann, the firm’s senior vice president, said in a statement sent to a reporter Friday.
A large public plaza with a garage beneath it both remain closed due to safety concerns. Recent published reports have said that inspectors deemed the two-level, 240-space subterranean garage unsafe after they discovered that its ceiling was sagging.
A rock garden and patio directly above the two-story jury assembly room also has been closed off to the public because of security concerns.
One court employee, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said there were reports of water leaking from the rock garden into the jurors’ room, nicknamed “Madison Square Garden” because of its dome-like resemblance to the famous arena. The leak has since been repaired, the court employee said.
A staircase close to the main entrance, between the second and third floors, has been closed, too, since the building’s opening because there is no protective barrier above the handrail, leaving an exposed space large enough for someone to accidentally fall two stories to the ground floor.
On the opposite side of the building, a staircase between the second and third floors has been closed since March 12, when a pane of glass mysteriously shattered, spraying shards of glass everywhere.
Near that broken glass, two cracks can be seen forming on the building’s glass facade.
Some defense attorneys seem at odds with the new courthouse. There’s the limited availability of interview booths — which some lawyers see as a cause for litigation.
The lone copy machine costs too much, they say, and then there’s that long, long walk between courtrooms.
“We’re going back and forth like yo-yos,” says Lynn Calvacca, 47, a private lawyer from Queens.
SOURCE: NewsDay.com
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Bronx Boro President Adolfo Carrion on the roof of the Bronx Courthouse with the old and the new Yankee Stadium behind him.
