Crook County courthouse basement to see major overhaul

When the majority of the basement level of the courthouse was taken up by historical artifacts, it wasn’t obvious to the beholder just how much space there is available.

Now the museum has taken up its new home in Old Stoney and those 10,000 square feet lie empty, it’s time for a new lease of life for the county’s seat of government.

Eventually, the basement floor will allow for more spacious offices and additional storage, as well as an additional – but smaller – community room to provide a more intimate space for gatherings.

Right now, though, Facilities Maintenance Supervisor Larry Schommer is concentrating on something even more important: the inner workings of the building.

Mechanical Overhaul

Schommer’s team reviewed the mechanical systems throughout the courthouse, some of which are the original fixtures.

“We looked at every mechanical item in the courthouse,” he says. “All our boilers, all our pumps, all our air handlers, exhaust fans.”

Many of those items had to be given a red rating on the risk assessment.

“That’s bad,” Schommer says.

These items affect efficiency and safety, but it wasn’t possible to do much about them before the museum moved and the area was stripped bare, including the ceiling.

Now, with the duct work exposed, the systems can be accessed more easily.

“There was nothing we could do before,” he says. “We had contractors, mechanical engineers, come in to look at this and give us ballpark estimates on things, but we really didn’t know exactly what we all needed to do until we ripped out the ceiling and could get to where guys could come in and actually look.”

This was the purpose of tearing out the space in the first place, he explains. With more accurate assessments in place, he can focus on seeking potential funding for the work.

“What we can start doing is going more into our construction documents and drawings and start narrowing things down,” he says.

“We’re going to be looking for grants on a lot of this, especially on the mechanical end.”

The same kind of energy-saving grants that provided new lighting for the fairgrounds, for example, could be accessible for this work.

“Right now we’re just at concept. We’ll see what we have for budget and go from there – it might be something that’s phased,” he says.

“We’re looking at what needs to be done.”

Renovations

“Once you clear it out and start looking, it’s pretty big,” says Schommer of the estimated 10,000 square feet now sitting empty under the main courthouse floor.

At first, the thought was to simply transform this into storage.

The plan has now changed to a complete overhaul of the basement, moving some of the main floor offices downstairs to expand others into that space.

This work will not be possible until after the mechanical elements have been tackled, but Schommer has already put together a conceptual design.

The plans would see the community room remain as it is today. The door that once led to the museum, however, will now be the entrance to a new office area.

Immediately to the left on walking through those doors will be the UW Extension Office. Unlike the rest of the basement occupants, this office will be staying where it is right now; however, the entrance will move and a reorganization will make the space more functional.

The Extension Office will also be getting more storage elsewhere in the building, says Schommer. However, changes to this area will not be visible until the tail end of the renovation so as to cause the least disruption possible to the already occupied space.

“That will be the last to go – we’ll try to keep them there as long as we can,” he says.

To the right will be an enclave of three county offices: Growth & Development, Road & Bridge and Facilities. A small conference room in the middle can be used for departmental meetings.

Bringing these offices together will allow for easier communication between departments where there’s often project overlap.

“We work back and forth quite a bit, mostly on equipment and…on projects as well,” Schommer says.

“Road & Bridge works quite a bit with Growth & Development, as well.”

Just past the enclave will be two smaller office spaces. These can be used by staff and visitors; for example, says Schommer, they will provide working space for consultants and a private space for attorneys to meet with their clients ahead of a court appearance.

“Right now, they have no place to go, so rather than sitting out in the lobby – out in the public with everybody – they will have their own space where they can work in private,” he says.

Emergency Management will take up the final office space on the right hand side.

“We’ve got [Emergency Management Coordinator Ed Robinson] a little bigger office now and he will have his own conference area,” he says. “He’ll have his own storage area.”

At the end of the corridor, the plans leave space for another large storage area with lockable cages for security.

“That will be climate controlled better. What we have now is that everyone has their own small little rooms – closets – and it’s hard to control the humidity and the temperature,” he says. The latter in particular, he notes, can be problematic.

The final new area will sit just past the Extension Office. A lobby will provide some open space to help to make the basement floor feel more spacious and comfortable, Schommer says.

Connected to the lobby will be a conference room that can be used for the same purposes as the existing community room. However, it will offer connectivity for online meetings and screenings and is also smaller, because some events simply do not require the floor space of the current community room.

“I’ve seen it before where people will use just a quarter of it. This will have better acoustics, it will be set up with video so you can do meetings,” he says.

The bathrooms will also be removed and replaced with new ones, which will include showers.

“The community room is the shelter for the City of Sundance,” he explains. The addition of showers increases the potential length of stay in an emergency.

These changes will have the knock-on effect of altering the main floor plans, after several offices vacate their current space. The Road & Bridge area, for example, will be transformed into offices for the sheriff and deputy sheriff, while the Growth & Development office space will allow the Crook County Attorney’s Office to expand its square footage.

“There’s going to be some minor changes here and there, but that’s the basic concept,” says Schommer.