Published: July 18, 2009 04:38 pm      

Judicial center dedicated

$20M facility has been in use for month

CATLETTSBURG — When it comes to courthouses, Boyd County’s have long been on the leading edge of technology, Kentucky’s chief supreme court said Friday.

The county’s old courthouse, which went into service in 1909, was the first court facility in the commonwealth to be equipped with air conditioning, said John D. Minton Jr., the keynote speaker at the dedication ceremony for Boyd’s sparkling new 64,000-square foot judicial center.

“Now, here you are again, on the edge of something new,” he said.

Minton, a host of other state and local dignitaries and dozens of others turned out to witness the ribbon-cutting for the building, which has been in use for about a month. The program was moved indoors because of earlier rain and the threat of more showers, and attendees packed into chairs that been placed in the ground-floor hallway.

Minton, the state’s highest-ranking judiciary member, said the dedication was special for him because it served as a bookend, of sorts, to another ceremony in Catlettsburg he attended back in the mid-1980s.

“Twenty-five years ago, as a practicing attorney, I participated in the decommissioning of the old federal building here,” he said. “It’s kind of an unusual opportunity to be part of both an end and a new beginning in the same city.”

Minton and other speakers at the dedication said the nearly $20 million judicial center was conceived, designed and constructed to meet the needs of the county’s justice system for the next 100 years.

“We’re standing on the brink of the next century, and we dedicate what will be a landmark in the city of Catlettsburg for the century to come,” he said.

Rick Kremer, the architect who designed the building, said he hoped 100 years from now, there would be people chaining themselves together in front of the center to resist attempts at tearing it down.

Kremer, of the Louisville architectural firm the Louis & Henry Group, said that out of the many buildings he had designed, the judicial center was one that was near and dear to his heart.

“I’m here to ask all of you to please take care of my baby,” he said.

Minton said Boyd was one of a number of counties targeted for courthouse upgrades after a review initiated by his predecessor, Joseph Lambert, revealed the “deplorable condition” of many of the state’s judicial facilities.

But members of the local legislative delegation said the project would likely have never come to fruition if not for the efforts of retired state Rep. John Vincent.

Vincent “was the voice behind this project. He made sure it stayed a priority, both in the House and the Senate.” said state Rep. Rocky Adkins, D-Sandy Hook, majority floor leader in the House. “It was his dedication and determination that made it become a reality.”

Vincent, who opted to not seek re-election last year after 12 years in the House, recalled receiving a 3 a.m. phone call from Adkins in 2005 notifying him that the legislature had approved funding for the judicial center.

“All Rocky said was, ‘It’s in,”’ he said.

“Whenever you serve as a state representative, one of you dreams is to have a new courthouse in your district,” Vincent said. “This is the fulfillment of a dream for me.”

State Sen. Walter Blevins, D-West Liberty, voiced a similar sentiment.

“It never gets much sweeter than when you get to cut the ribbon on a building like this one,” he said.

The new building consolidated the county’s court system — which previously was split between the courthouse annex, which opened in 1982, and the old courthouse — under a single roof. The center houses both the circuit and district courts, along with family court, drug court, juvenile court and pretrial services.

The circuit clerk’s office, which used to be divided among the annex and the second floor of the old courthouse, is now housed in a single large office on the ground floor of the new building.

There are a total of five courtrooms in the building — two each for district and circuit court, on the second and third floors, respectively, and one for family court.

Boyd County does not have a family court judge, so until the General Assembly funds that position, the courtroom designed for family court is being used by domestic relations commissioners.

The building also is equipped with the latest computer, video and networking technology, along with high-level security achieved though use of a single-port entry with magnetometers. Also, prisoners are segregated from the general public by separate entrances and corridors, and are brought from the jail to the courthouse via an elevated pedestrian walkway.