New Johnson County Courthouse entrance adds security

IOWA CITY - Construction is underway on a $250,000 addition to the Johnson County Courthouse that will include a new public entrance with increased security, including metal detectors.

The new entrance on the back of the 114-year-old sandstone courthouse will become the main entrance. The front doors will be used as an emergency exit only.

'It's so everyone coming into the courthouse can be screened,” said Michael Kennedy, county construction manager.

A bond referendum to finance a $33.4 million expansion that would have addressed safety and space issues at the courthouse failed to get the required supermajority vote of 60 percent in November 2014. Larger projects, including a justice center that would have included an expanded jail, failed in 2012 and 2013.

The new, minimalist addition provides one set of doors for members of the public, who will walk through metal detectors and put bags through an X-ray machine. A second set of doors on the south side of the addition will be for sheriff's deputies bringing inmates to the courthouse for hearings.

Both groups will funnel into the building through what is now the exterior entrance, but will become a wider entrance from the new addition into the original structure, Kennedy said.

'Far fewer people are brought in by the sheriff, but there will be times they'll be coming and going at the same time,” he said.

The project is expected to be complete by March 11.

Increasing security was a big part of previous bond issues to expand the courthouse, but other challenges remain.

When the courthouse first opened in 1901, it had just one 200-seat courtroom. The building now has six courtrooms, including the original large courtroom on the third floor. As courtrooms were added, offices, closets and breakrooms were downsized or eliminated.

Johnson County Attorney Janet Lyness recently got a three-year grant to hire one full-time and one-part time victim witness coordinator, 'but we have nowhere to put them,” she said. They will convert a small meeting room into an office and reshuffle volunteers to make room for the part-time coordinator, she said.

Courthouse visitors in wheelchairs can enter the building, but can't access witness stands or jury boxes. That will be fixed in a future phase of improvements to the building, facilities manager Eldon Slaughter said.