The Clatsop County Courthouse is undergoing renovations to create a single, secure point of entry in an effort to make the building safer.

At the beginning of March, Clatsop County hired Haworth Inc., a McMinnville-based construction company, to begin outfitting the courthouse’s first-floor entrance with a metal detector and bag scanner.

That entrance, located by the courthouse’s parking lot on Duane Street, is one of three current entry points.

“In maybe a bigger county or a bigger courthouse, you could have multiple entrances that are secured,” said Judge Beau Peterson. “Getting to a single one isn’t as important as having a secure entryway.

 

“This building really only has one entrance that is ADA-compliant, so if you can only staff one, it’s going to be that one. If we could staff multiple (entrances) and there was room to set up security scanning, maybe we would, but the building was really not laid out that way.”

The courthouse, built in 1908, has two other entrances that can be reached by climbing multiple concrete stairs, making them inopportune for people with disabilities. That, combined with limited staffing capacity and funding for security detectors, has narrowed the project to the first-floor entrance.

But as the other two entrances lead to the second floor of the courthouse, which holds kiosks and service windows, staff expect that use of the courthouse’s elevator will increase once those doors have closed permanently.

Monica Steele, the Clatsop County assistant manager, said the $1.4 million project includes modernizing the elevator. The county will get a boost for the project in the form of a $444,000 grant from the Department of Justice.

Steele said the county plans to staff the entrance through a private security company, though a sheriff’s deputy could have to step in to cover operations from time to time.

The courthouse’s former law library, located on the first floor, is also undergoing renovations to become a secure holding cell for defendants awaiting their day in court. The county’s jail, which used to be located adjacent to the courthouse, is now more than 4 miles away in Warrenton.

“Most of the law library resources were online, even when we had that room,” said trial administrator Julie Vredeveld. “Anything current was going to be an online source. There were books in there, but they were primarily older reference books rather than up-to-date case books.”

 

Peterson said that there had been talks of having a single, secure entry since he’d moved to Clatsop County 18 years ago.

He said that although the courthouse had never undergone a serious threat to safety, such incidents have occurred in other parts of the country. Just this month, a woman in Montana was shot and killed by law enforcement after entering a courthouse with a pistol and threatening staff and a judge.

“I think we would all rather have this in place before something happens, because we’ve seen instances of mass violence in lots of places — schools, shopping centers,” Peterson said.

The construction and renovations are anticipated to span six months. After that, the courthouse’s second-floor entrances will be closed to the public, though people will still be able to exit through them.

In the meantime, both the county and the courthouse will be working to make sure the public is able to follow and adapt to the construction and renovations through signage, media releases and coordination.

Judge Kirk Wintermute’s courtroom, which is located next to the former law library on the first floor, could be out of commission for some time due to the project.

Wintermute will share Peterson’s second-floor courtroom at times, while some defendants and members of the public will have to attend court at the Judge Guy Boyington Building on Commercial Street.

“This is really important, and it’s inconvenient for a minute, but watching the court and our county partners all work together to pull this off has really been a joy,” Vredeveld said. “And making sure that people can come to court and be safe when they’re in the courthouse is our top priority.”