Funds OKd for Municipal Court Planned Near LAX

An architect will be hired within the next two months to design a new municipal courthouse near Los Angeles International Airport to reduce overcrowding at the West Los Angeles Municipal Court on Purdue Avenue, county officials said.

Planning for the courthouse at Aviation Boulevard and 111th Street remained on track last week with the inclusion of $9.5 million for the work in the annual budget approved by the County Board of Supervisors.

The courthouse, to be completed in 1995 at a cost of $70 million, is projected to include 12 to 18 courtrooms, said Rob Quist, deputy administrator of the Los Angeles Municipal Court.

Continental Development Corp. will build the courthouse as part of Continental City, a development east of LAX that includes two hotels and 2 million square feet of offices. Continental Development will select the architect, but the Board of Supervisors must validate the choice.

County officials said they hope use of the private developer will keep construction costs down. Supervisors have increasingly turned over construction and other projects to the private sector, believing that a company driven by profits will work more efficiently than government.

When completed, the new facility will reduce by 60% the caseload at the West Los Angeles Municipal Court, Quist said. The Purdue Avenue facility is overloaded with 11 judges and their staffs, seven more than the facility was designed to accommodate. Two jurists are forced to work out of rented storefront space formerly occupied by a drugstore and a shoe store. Other judges work in trailers or conference rooms rented from the city of Los Angeles.

“The place is way beyond its capacity, and we can’t provide the kind of service that we need to,” Quist said.

Before the new courthouse is completed, several courtrooms will be moved to temporary quarters. Two traffic courts and a small-claims court will move late this year to rented offices on Robertson Boulevard, near Hamilton High School, Quist said. Plans call for all West Los Angeles judges currently housed in trailers to move into city-owned offices by early 1991.