New courtrooms open for business

PALMER — With a yearlong courthouse expansion all but finished, three new courtrooms are open for business.

Where once there was a parking lot, there is a sparkling new hallway with gleaming new courtrooms at the Palmer Courthouse near downtown Palmer. Light construction is still underway. Patches of carpet and tile are still to be laid. Orange cones warning the area is a construction zone are still on site. But judges are holding hearings in their new digs.

Debbie Miller, deputy clerk of courts for the courthouse, said the building is bigger and brighter now and the hustle and disarray of undergoing expansion and remodeling seem to be settling down.

With the new courtrooms came new offices for judges and staff.

“Getting everyone moved into their offices has brought some relief,” Miller said.

And it has brought an end, mostly, to a game of musical chairs judges have been playing since about a year ago as they shared courtrooms. The expansion gives a devoted courtroom to Kari Kristiansen and Vanessa White, two Superior Court judges appointed to the bench in Palmer last year.

Work isn’t quite finished, Miller said. The expansion project included the remodeling of existing older courtrooms 1, 2 and 3. The first two are finished, but Courtroom 3 is still under construction. That portion of the project is expected to be complete by Thursday.

Wendy Lyford, area court administrator for the Third Judicial District, which includes Palmer, said the court is still planning on expanding into the former Valley Hospital building.

Right now the Palmer Grand Jury works out of the building, which is to be its permanent home. The plan, eventually, is to start moving other court-related offices into the building, like probation officers, defense attorneys and prosecutors, Lyford said. When exactly that will happen is unclear.

“My understanding has been it’s an issue with when their current leases are up,” Lyford said.

The court also plans to move jury assembly into the building, Lyford said, but that move will wait on a connector between the two buildings to avoid having jurors go through security once at the old hospital site and again at the courthouse.

That could be problematic, especially in the winter, Lyford said.

“We finally got the word that the connection is going to be built by the [state’s] Department of Administration,” Lyford said.

The court system has plans for a ribbon-cutting ceremony to officially unveil the new and improved courthouse, but has not set a date.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.