Court of Appeal, New Sixth Appellate District Courthouse

The Court of Appeal - New Sixth Appellate District Courthouse project provides a new one-courtroom, two-story courthouse of approximately 50,000 square feet on an existing, two-acre, state-owned property in the city of Sunnyvale in Santa Clara County. It includes secured parking for justices and surface parking spaces. It will include the demolition of an existing building on the state-owned site as well as replace the appellate court’s current space in a leased facility. The project will use the Design-build delivery method.

Gross Square Footage: 49,798
Total Courtrooms: 1
Current Authorized Project Budget: $86,725,000
Criteria Architect: Page & Turnbull
Design-Build Entity: TBD
Construction Management Agency: TBD
Fund: General Fund

The Court of Appeal, Sixth Appellate District’s purpose is to assist the Supreme Court of California in providing appellate review for the superior courts within its jurisdiction by deciding appeals from final judgements and appealable orders, as well as ruling on extraordinary writ petitions such as habeas corpus and mandamus. It handles cases from the counties of San Benito, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, and Monterey, deciding over 900 appeals annually in addition to disposing of 500 writ petitions. Cases are decided by randomly selected three-justice panels.

The Court of Appeal, Sixth Appellate District is located in leased space in a commercial office building in the downtown area of the city of San Jose. This leased space includes one en banc courtroom with support spaces, justice chambers, attorney offices, mediation operations, clerk operations, a law library, and court administration. This building was built in 1983. With the uncertainty of continuing market escalation for commercial office space, expensive and escalating lease rates, decreasing vacancy, and large-scale construction projects preparing to start nearby (including Google’s 80-acre mixed use development that is part of a larger 250-acre downtown San Jose Diridon Station Area Redevelopment Plan), the appellate court faces impending inability to afford increased lease rates in such a highly competitive rental market. Moreover, there are security, overcrowding, and public service deficiencies in the leased facility that cannot be corrected as the current building layout creates suboptimal operational adjacencies and space shortfall.

Owing to lack of space within the leased facility, appellate court operations are not contiguous and awkwardly distributed between two floors. Operations have been confined to predesigned leased-space floor plates, such that adjacencies required for effective court operations cannot be fully realized, space shortfall and overcrowding exists including in public waiting areas, and future growth based on caseload will not be accommodated. The existing layouts on both floors also have security vulnerabilities including insufficient space for security screening and inadequate secured paths of circulation for justices and staff. No onsite parking is available for court users including the public, visitors, and court staff. Parking for court users is only accommodated off site through public pay lots or very limited street parking.

The new courthouse project will replace and consolidate the appellate court’s current operations. The appellate court’s existing leased facility is inadequate for public service and for the operational needs of the court in the long-term. Square footage constraints have resulted in insufficient space for security screening and lobby waiting areas, overcrowding of public and staff areas, and no separate paths of circulation for justices, staff, and the public. These deficiencies pose a safety and security risk to all facility users. The project will relieve the current space shortfall and overcrowding, improve security, accessibility, and safety, and allow the appellate court to co-locate functions for operational efficiency.

For this project, no site acquisition is required, as the project will make use of an existing state-owned property of approximately two acres in the city of Sunnyvale in Santa Clara County. This property contains the existing vacant and former Sunnyvale Courthouse, which previously served as a branch courthouse for the Superior Court of Santa Clara County. Vacant since 2016, this existing single-story building has since surpassed its useful life as a superior court facility, and it is too small and would be too costly to be repurposed as an appellate courthouse. The highest and best use of this property is for new development, and this existing building will be demolished in preparation for the construction of the new appellate courthouse building.

The New Sixth Appellate District Courthouse will accomplish the following immediately needed improvements to the appellate court and enhance its ability to serve all court users:

• Provide a permanent location on state-owned property for the Sixth District Court of Appeal.
• Provide state-owned appellate courthouse that is modern, safe, secure, accessible, and constructed to Judicial Council facility standards to the benefit of all court users.
• Enhance the public’s access to justice by relieving the current space shortfall and overcrowding, increasing security, and improving operational efficiency and customer service
• Allow the appellate court to operate in a facility with adequate space for greater functionality than in current conditions, including:
  • Safe and secure internal circulation that maintains separate zones for the public and justices and staff.
  • Adequate visitor security screening and queuing in the entrance area.
  • Adequate public waiting areas and circulation space.
  • Improved public service, including an adequately sized and designed public lobby, service counter, clerk’s office, and mediation rooms.
  • Onsite parking for court users including the public, visitors, justices, and court staff.
  • Appropriate organization and adjacency of spaces designed and constructed to current Judicial Council facility standards.
• Consolidate operations and functions to optimize use of court facilities by vacating a leased facility.
• Maintain appellate court operation in Santa Clara County—a location familiar to court users, visitors, and the public.
• Eliminate future leasing uncertainties and ongoing expensive, escalating lease costs.
• Avoid expenditure of annual lease costs compared to new construction—approximately $16 million at 2029 Net Present Value and approximately $140 million over a 30-year lease term
• Provide the construction of a new facility prior to the appellate court’s current lease expiration in January 2029 and requiring no lease extension.

This project is one of the highest priority capital outlay projects for the judicial branch.

This project is currently in the Performance Criteria phase.

The Design-Build phase—including Construction—is estimated to begin in April 2025 and complete in September 2028.

Images pending development of project design.

Pursuant to the California Environmental Quality Act (“CEQA”), the Judicial Council of California is required to analyze the potential environmental impacts of each of its proposed projects. California’s environmental review process under CEQA provides an opportunity for interested parties, government agencies, California Native American Tribes, environmental non-governmental organizations, and members of the public to participate in the CEQA process.

CEQA documents for this project are available via the links below.

• Notice of Preparation of a Draft EIR 
• Initial Study
• Scoping Meeting Presentation Recording, April 17, 2024

The Judicial Council will conduct a public scoping meeting on Wednesday, April 17, 2024, from 4:30 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. at the following location:

Sunnyvale City Hall, Alder Room #154
456 W. Olive Avenue
Sunnyvale, CA 94086