Plumas County

New Quincy Courthouse

Project Info

The Superior Court of California, County of Plumas - New Quincy Courthouse project provides a new 3-courtroom courthouse of 54,000 square feet in the town of Quincy. It includes secured parking for judicial officers. The project will require acquisition of a site of approximately 1.88 acres. It will replace the court’s operations and courtrooms currently in the existing main Quincy Courthouse. The project will use the design-build delivery method.

Background

Plumas County is served by the superior court’s main historic courthouse in Quincy, the county seat. This courthouse houses all court operations and courtrooms for all case types. Between 2010 and 2014, all branch court locations in the county—in Portola, Greenville, and Chester—were closed due to budget reductions and staff shortages.

The new courthouse project will replace the court’s operations and courtrooms currently in the county-owned, main Quincy Courthouse. The facility is substantially out of compliance with regulatory safety, seismic, accessibility codes, and Judicial Council space standards. Among its significant functional issues are its space shortfall, overcrowding, and security deficiencies. Including undersized lobby and space for entrance screening, public waiting areas, lack of space for jurors to assemble as well as deliberate, lack of holding facilities, no attorney-client interview rooms, no self-help area, multiple points of ingress/egress, no onsite parking facilities for the public, and no path of circulation for in-custodies separate from the public and judicial officers and staff.

For this project, acquisition will be required of site of approximately 1.88 acres in the town of Quincy.

The New Quincy Courthouse will accomplish the following immediately needed improvements to the superior court and enhance its ability to serve the public:

• Provide an accessible, safe, efficient, and modern full-service courthouse in the town of Quincy.
• Improve security, relieve overcrowding, and improve operational efficiency and customer service.
• Provide court operations in a facility with adequate space for greater functionality than in current conditions, including:

  • Safe and secure building with single point of entry.
  • Safe and secure internal circulation that maintains separate zones for the public, staff, and in- custody defendants.
  • Adequate visitor security screening and queuing in the entrance area.
  • Both secure and nonsecure attorney-client interview rooms.
  • Adequately sized public waiting areas.
  • Adequate space for self-help area.
  • Adequate spaces for jury deliberation and jury assembly with capacity for typical jury pools.
  • Has ADA accessible spaces.
  • Facility with dependable physical infrastructure. Secure in-custody holding facilities adequate in number.
  • Remove the existing main Quincy Courthouse from service, which is rated as a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) P-154 High-Risk seismically deficient building.
  • Avoid substantial deferred maintenance and security system refresh expenditures.

This project is in the Immediate Need priority group and consequently is one of the highest priority trial court capital-outlay projects for the judicial branch.

Schedule

This project is currently in the site acquisition phase.

Currently two sites have been shortlisted from the 10 locations originally identified: the Feather Publishing parcel, and the Stone House property in East Quincy (includes the parcel immediately east of the property).

Those two sites will then be presented to the council’s Administrative Director and at a public meeting of the council’s Court Facilities Advisory Committee. The public can provide written or in-person comments at committee meetings—dates and meeting agendas are posted on the committee’s public webpage. The committee will discuss the site options at its meeting and take action to approve site selection if desired.

Once the committee approves the desired site, the Judicial Council will request approval at a public State Public Works Board (SPWB) meeting. If approved, the council will coordinate further analysis of the site, real estate due diligence, and purchase negotiations. After the terms, conditions, and price are determined, a request to acquire the site will be presented to the SPWB for approval.

Council staff will implement CEQA and other environmental regulatory requirements of the selected site. Public outreach will occur at the commencement of CEQA (Notice of Preparation) and at the publication of the draft CEQA document.

Project Advisory Group

  • Presiding Judge Douglas Prouty
  • Judge Janet Hilde
  • Deborah Norrie, Court Executive Officer
  • Dave Hollister, District Attorney
  • Cheryl Reinitz, Forrest Stationers
  • Wayne Yates, Attorney
  • Amy Carey, Quincy Provisions/Carey’s Candy
  • Dwight Pierson, Retired (former Superintendent of Schools in Southwest Iowa)
  • Jon Kolb, Retired (former Assistant Engineer for Plumas County Public Works)