Surrender (Jack Bog's Blog)

Sad news on the front page of the O today. The City of Portland has given up its fight to keep the federal government from blowing a hole in the wall of the Pioneer Courthouse, the oldest building in town, to make room for a parking garage for the judges who work in the building.

City Commissioner (and mayoral candidate) Jim Francesconi, who held up the courthouse renovation by refusing to issue a city permit to build a new driveway, has caved in to bullying by the federal General Services Administration, landlord of the Pioneer. Apparently the GSA treatened to start a federal condemnation of whatever property was needed to get the job done. The city decided not to spend the legal fees that such a process would entail.

And so the courthouse renovators have won every battle. The historic Pioneer Post Office is no more, and the other tenants of the building have also been moved out for good. When the renovation is completed, that entire, wonderful building, cushier than ever, will be the sole province of just four federal appeals judges. The public will have little reason to go inside it again.

Like Congressman David Wu, who helped ram this through over the objections of history buffs big and small (including Congressman Earl Blumenauer), I worked for a year in the Pioneer. On the second floor were spacious chambers for three judges, and a law library. The appeals court operation took up less than half the useable space in the building. Even with a fourth judge, there would be no need for the whole courthouse. And with law libraries shrinking as books become obsolete and the internet fulfills more and more of the profession's legal information needs, there's no call for a huge library space.

And the parking garage? In the Pioneer Courthouse? How 1955.

Oh, well. I wish the city had stopped this. Short of that, I wish it would have prolonged the process and made it more expensive for the feds. But the City Council has come up with a fairly constant refrain in the last few years: "We'd probably lose in court, so we won't fight." Sometimes you should fight it out 'til the end, even though you'd probably lose. Maybe this was one of those times.

Comments (8)

I hate the west coast's lack of sense of history and preservation. It's so short-sighted.

Furthermore, did you get a load of the cost? Divide that by the number of parking spaces this will create.

It's a real crime.

Posted by alan | February 21, 2004 2:27 PM

Of course, if the City did fight it in court, they'd just end up getting shafted from the other side by accusations of wasting the taxpayer's money.

Lose-lose choices all around at this point.

Posted by The One True b!X | February 21, 2004 6:43 PM

Yep. Lose-lose. (And maybe a third lose for Congressman Wu -- we'll see.)

Posted by Jack Bog | February 21, 2004 7:59 PM

If I recall correctly, not a single one of the Portland-based judges who use the courthouse had the courage to say that he supported the GSA plan. It would make more sense to move the appeals court into the lavish Hatfield Courthouse a few blocks down, which was built with the equivalent of one floor per judge, and move some offices out of Hatfield into Pioneer.

Posted by Isaac Laquedem | February 21, 2004 11:48 PM

"I hate the west coast's lack of sense of history and preservation."

Jeez, last time I looked, the city trying to preserve the courthouse was on the west coast, and the government trying to screw it up was on the east coast.

Posted by mark | February 22, 2004 12:43 PM

If this thing is so damn old why doesn't it have a Historical Registration? Actually it may, I don't actually know. So my question I guess would be, just exactly how does a Historic Registry protect buildings from change?

Posted by pdxkona | February 22, 2004 8:40 PM

It's not that people won't go in...it's will the feds let them? As it is now, you have to pass security and go through a metal detector to get inside the courthouse area (necessary to climb the stairs to get to the cupola, where there are interesting views coupled with photos of what the same view looked like in the past).

I've been to a couple of oral argument sessions; the courtrooms are imposing and beautiful.

Posted by Kris Hasson-Jones | March 1, 2004 4:34 PM

Your point about not needing library space any more because of on-line legal research is not well informed.

Yes, on-line legal research is available. Mostly.

However, experience has shown it is not 24/7/365 available. On-line systems fail, worms crash routers, and other technical issues mean the law books still have to be there.

Posted by John Bartley K7AAY | May 14, 2004 2:02 PM

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Saturday, February 21, 2004

Surrender

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