Joliet, IL, Orders in a Courthouse for Downtown Revitalization
Listen to our exclusive audio interview with Kevin Havens of design and delivery firm Wight & Company about how Joliet, IL, is anchoring its downtown revitalization plans to a new courthouse and court administration complex.
JOLIET, IL—The new 369,000-square-foot, $210 million development project in Joliet, IL, that officials hope will serve as a cornerstone of downtown revitalization in the former steel and manufacturing haven is not a condo, office or retail project.
It’s a courthouse.
Chicago-based Wight & Company designed a vibrant, open complex that includes 38 modern courtrooms and a 10-story office tower, enclosing a public space that the city hopes will help re-energize the downtown business district.
“The county board of Will County, which resides in Joliet, made a big decision,” says Kevin Havens, executive vice president and director of design at Wight & Company. That was to not just provide new facilities for the County Court establishment, but to actually have it as an opportunity to rethink how development in downtown Joliet might take place.”
Listen to our exclusive audio interview with Kevin Havens of Wight & Company in the audio player below. If you don’t see an audio player, click here to listen to the interview.
Wight & Company’s vision for a new courthouse in Chicago’s suburbs has been recognized by the American Institute of Architects’ Academy of Architecture for Justice. The design for the Will County Courthouse is one of 15 recipients nationally of the 2018 Justice Facilities Review awards program, and one of only four to receive a Citation, the highest honor. The annual JFR program recognizes “the best in justice facility design,” depicting “the latest trends in the design and construction of justice facilities in the United States.”
According to Havens, the old courthouse was “the poster child of everything that’s gone wrong with building design.”
“It’s opaque. It has a kind of punitive nature about it,” he says. “There’s really nothing transparent about the interaction of justice.”
In contrast, he says, the new courthouse will “convey the notion of transparency in justice” through the generous use of glass in all public areas. The courthouse will include 38 modern courtrooms when it is completed in 2020. A light-filled public lobby on the ground level will provide direct access to jury assembly, traffic court and the Circuit Court Clerk public service area. Jurors cited the design as “a good model of a user-friendly courthouse experience.”
“Wight & Company brings a team of professionals who understand the needs of Will County,” says Jim Moustis, Will County Board speaker. “They designed a courthouse that was within our budget, will be safe and efficient for our employees and residents, and is now an award-winning building that our taxpayers can be proud of for generations to come.”
The building’s L-shaped design creates a public square in front of the courthouse, Havens says.
“It wants to be an attractor for people,” Havens says. “It’s heavily landscaped, with good trees and benches. It’s not something you want to stay away from. Whether you have court business or not the urban square is something that they want people to be attracted to.”
The hope is that the courthouse and square will also serve to attract businesses like restaurants and shops to support the working population in the courthouse and office complex, he says.
Court administration agencies and the court clerk’s office, many of which are scattered in other office space around Joliet, will be consolidated into the new building.
“It also generates a lot of potential business outside of the courthouse,” he says. “These people need to eat. They need transportation. They might need to access other offices for a private attorney somewhere in the area. So it really becomes a kind of injection of life — at least this is the vision of the county board — into this downtown area.
A new public library and a culinary institute connected with Joliet Junior College have located in the downtown business district, and an expansion of Joliet Central High School several years ago that connected the school to a new dining facility via an atrium led to surprising positive results, Havens says.
“The space now is being rented almost every weekend by one community group after another to hold their events,” he says. “And it’s a splendid thing. A lot of people in Joliet go to high school there, and they really don’t move away. They stay in the community. For them to just think that high school has actually been a magnet for their continued life after graduation is really marvelous.”
Joliet is hoping to encourage more consolidation in government offices to lead its downtown redevelopment, Havens says.
“There might be a new county government center that might even combine with the city government, which right now are two different entities, to actually take the place adjacent to the new courthouse by demolishing the old courthouse,” he says.