On Tuesday, Pittsburgh City Council took a step towards putting the Municipal Courts Building up for sale.
For the past 33 years, the City of Pittsburgh has owned and paid for utilities, maintenance and upkeep at the First Avenue building, which is attached to the Allegheny County Jail. The building originally housed a city court presided over by mayoral-appointed magistrates who handled preliminary criminal proceedings. But that system was replaced in 2002, when the court was dissolved and elected magistrates assumed those duties, much as they do in other municipalities.
Currently, the city only occupies half a floor in the four-story structure, but bears the cost for the entire facility — a situation city councilor Anthony Coghill says is unfair.
“This is a liability, this building. This is not an asset,” said Coghil during a Tuesday-morning council meeting. “This building's going to do nothing but cost us money.”
After the meeting, Coghill said the city is paying more than $300,000 per year on the building’s bills.
Council passed a Coghill-sponsored bill to end a 1991 cooperation agreement between the City and Allegheny County for the building’s lease. The bill asks the mayor, the state and the county to work out a deal to end that agreement, and grants permission to the administration to sell the building — to the state, county, or potentially any other interested party.
Tuesday’s vote was 8 to 1, with Deb Gross the lone no. She was also the sole vote against the proposal in a preliminary vote last week, when it had just four votes in favor, three abstentions and one absent.
“When we are in possession of facilities around the city, we hold them in public trust, and it's really a matter of being careful stewards of public buildings,” Gross said Tuesday. “I think that we should take our time, and it's our responsibility to hold property into the future to consider what needs are being served.”
Under the measure, the city will continue to pay bills and own the building until a deal is worked out to transfer it to another entity.
Coghill says he’d prefer to sell the building to the state or county, but if a deal cannot be reached with them, the option should be open to sell it to an outside party who’d lease the structure back to the county.
“We're not going to sell this building to a private developer unless the county and the and the state can't work something out,” Coghill said. “But we are no longer going to pay for the upkeep and the capital costs that are coming down the road when we're not housing our own employees there.”
The building has major repair needs — an old roof, moldy water fountains, rooms without heating — and requires an immediate infusion of cash to improve conditions, Coghill said. He said he’d be willing to spend “a couple million dollars” on those repairs if doing so would get it ready to sell.
“Let's be thankful that the bones are good and the structure is good. It's built like a fort, but the inside really needs completely renovated,” he said. “I'm willing to do that on the city's dime until they work everything out. And I hope it will be our last expense in this building, and we say ‘sayonara’ in six months.”
Mayor Ed Gainey's administration expressed openness to the proposal.
Last week, Deputy Mayor Jake Pawlak confirmed the existing city footprint within the building is "pretty small," made up of the police department's warrant office and computer operations team. He said those units could likely be relocated.
Director of Public Works Chris Hornstein agreed that the building has "great bones" but said, "There are a lot of original components that are at or nearing the end of their lifecycle, such as the roof, such as the AC, that the city is going to have to replace, and would cost a significant amount, seven figures at least for some of those elements."
The city has repaired the elevator and invested in the existing HVAC system, he said.
"It's a costly building to own and operate," Hornstein said.
He added that it "wasn't anybody's fault" that it remained in the city's hands even after the departure of the city officials it housed. "This is just simply a real estate action that didn't keep pace with the reorganization."
