Clackamas County has selected Fengate PCL Progress Partners to design, build, finance, operate and maintain a new courthouse through a public-private partnership. FP3 was selected through a competitive procurement process.

The FP3 consortium comprises Fengate Asset Management and PCL Investments Inc. as developer, PCL Construction Services Inc. as design-build contractor, Honeywell as services provider and DLR Group as design services provider.

Fengate is managing the investment as part of its infrastructure strategy on behalf of its investors, including an investment fund owned by the LiUNA Pension Fund of Central and Eastern Canada.

Built in 1936 to serve 50,000 residents, the existing facility can no longer handle the demands of a population of 420,000 that continues to grow, according to a news release from Fengate Asset Management. The gap between space availability and judicial needs of the growing population in the county has led to delays in trials and incarceration and affected child support hearings and civil litigation trials. The facility has been determined functionally obsolete and seismically unsound.

The new 241,073-square-foot courthouse will be built on the county’s Red Soils Campus in Oregon City. The site will allow courthouse users to quickly access county departments, including Social Services, Behavioral Health, Public Health, Juvenile, Veterans Services and the Family Justice Center.

The county owns the land and utility infrastructure already is installed as a part of the master plan for the campus. The new facility will feature 16 courtrooms, 17 judicial chambers, space for the District Attorney’s Office, secure loading and staging areas, enhanced prisoner transfer facilities, jury assembly and grand jury spaces, safe corridors for courthouse users, and secure holding cells for violent offenders.

In May 2021, Clackamas County Commissioners approved a plan to pursue a public-private partnership for the new courthouse, the first of its kind for Oregon. The county owns the courthouse and the state and the county will not make any payments until the building is completed and ready for occupancy. Upon completion, the state’s contribution will be applied as a lump sum payment toward the private financing with the remainder repaid by the county over the remaining 30-year term of the project agreement.

FP3’s goal is to meet or exceed subcontracting goals on the project utilizing local Disadvantaged Minority-Owned/Women-Owned/Emerging Small Businesses/Service-Disabled Veterans Business, Small Business Utilization goals and Construction Career Pathways Project initiatives. Upon completion, FP3 will operate and maintain the facility over a 30-year period.

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Clackamas County is advancing plans for a large new courthouse complex to be built with financial help from the state, 15 years after local voters rejected paying for it themselves.

The county is in line for state money to finance up to half of the cost of a $155 million courthouse. However, it would not be built in downtown Oregon City, where the existing one is located. The new courthouse would be constructed on a county-owned parcel off of Warner Milne Road, in an area locally known as “red soils,” for the clay-like dirt found there.

Proponents are considering a large facility: approximately 215,000 square feet, with five stories and a secure basement. The courthouse would be able to hold 16 courtrooms, 20 judicial chambers and office space for court administration, the county District Attorney’s office, the Sheriff’s Office’s civil division and the Oregon Department of Human Services.

The current courthouse was completed in 1937, and public officials say the building is outdated, undersized for the county’s needs and vulnerable in the event of a major earthquake.

“The current location is on ground that is seismically unsafe,” Presiding Judge Robert Herndon said. “This area of downtown Oregon City is fill. A seismic review of it indicates during a seismic event this land is subject to liquefaction and will turn to mud. We’ll be in the Willamette River.”

The courts are getting busier as Clackamas County has grown. Criminal cases filed by the District Attorney’s office jumped 15 percent in 2016. Earlier this year, Herndon backed a Judicial Department request for another judge in Clackamas County.

County officials have sought a new courthouse for about two decades, but funding has proved elusive. Voters decisively rejected a 2002 ballot measure that would have allowed the county to issue bonds to pay for a courthouse project. The measure failed by more than 32,000 votes.

This time, courthouse proponents plan to avoid the ballot box. Money would instead come from the Legislature’s dedicated courthouse construction fund.

SERA Architects is designing the courthouse, with associate principal Rebecca Epstein leading the project. The Portland firm has worked on the county’s campus master plan since 1998, and on courthouse design since 2014.

“It is an exciting project for Clackamas and SERA as it will sit in the heart of the campus and improve the court’s ability to provide services,” Epstein stated in an email message.

If a new courthouse is constructed, the existing building could be a candidate for adaptive reuse, local officials said. Downtown Oregon City has seen substantial redevelopment in recent years, and the property is likely to interest developers.

“Oregon City, it’s really changed,” Herndon said. “I think the (existing) courthouse is more of an impediment to further development downtown. There are a lot of restaurants and other businesses down here that have opened up. They don’t need a courthouse – we kill the parking.”

Oregon City’s downtown would benefit from the move, Mayor Dan Holladay said.

“Twenty years ago, it was not a good time,” he said. “But today, given the major transitions that have happened in downtown Oregon City over the last 10 or 15 years, the loss of the courthouse staff in downtown Oregon City is not necessarily a bad thing.”

“On the whole of it, I think moving the courthouse to the hill is a good thing,” he said.

Carol Pauli, president of the Downtown Oregon City Association, said she hopes the courthouse building can gain another use.

“It’s an important part of our heritage and our identity as a city, being the county seat,” she said. “Those blocks have been the center of revitalization. The courthouse could be part of the momentum of the revitalization.”

Funding depends on disbursements from the state’s courthouse capital construction improvement fund that is controlled by the Legislature. Multnomah County was the first local government to take advantage of the fund, which was created in 2013, said Phil Lemman, spokesman for the Oregon Judicial Department.

Jefferson County has also used it, and Lane County is next in line for courthouse funding. Clackamas County would follow.

Clackamas County has already been reimbursed $1.25 million from the fund for courthouse planning. The project stands to get more funding in 2019, followed by a “big ask” – a payment of about $77 million – in 2021, Herndon said.

The state money can be used for up to 50 percent of court-related construction costs. It also incentivizes counties to provide office space for state agencies. That’s why a small Department of Human Services office is planned as part of the court complex.

Holladay cautioned the new courthouse isn’t a done deal yet.

“I’ve been in government long enough to know if you start things, it doesn’t always happen,” he said. “And if it does, it takes twice as long as you thought.”

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