Courthouse will stay, judges say

TERRE HAUTE -- Judges cannot afford to move into a new federal courthouse planned for downtown Terre Haute, one of the judges said.\nBudget constraints have forced the U.S. District Court to lay off two employees, said Chief Judge Larry J. McKinney.\n"The current budget crunch limits our ability to pay rent. We have to think of different ways of accommodating our needs," McKinney told The Indianapolis Star for a story Sunday.\nThe proposed courthouse is expected to cost as much as $18 million. That could make rent as high as $1 million a year -- twice what the court pays for space in the old federal building that opened in 1935, said David Wilkinson, a spokesman for the General Services Administration.\nThe judges' reluctance to move caught officials by surprise. Terre Haute has been working since 2000 with Indiana's U.S. senators to renovate the old building and turn it over to Indiana State University.\nFederal grants are expected to provide $7.1 million, about half the amount necessary. ISU plans a private fund-raising drive to obtain the rest of the money.\n"Everything was fine until the judge told us the rent situation would be difficult. We are trying to sort all this stuff out," said Tom Sugar, chief of staff for U.S. Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind.\nMcKinney suggested that ISU could take over the building as planned and receive rent from the court. But ISU said sharing the building with a federal court could pose a security risk for students.\nMayor Kevin Burke said the city would do what it could to accommodate the court so the federal building could remain in Terre Haute.\n"It is part of what we are," Burke said.\nThe building, which also houses the U.S. Postal Service, U.S. marshals, court clerks and probation officers, is noted as the best example of art deco architecture in the city, with marble on the inside and Indiana limestone on the outside.\nThe building's centerpiece is the second-floor federal courtroom with its mural of the signing of the Magna Carta. The Depression-era Works Progress Administration commissioned artist Frederick Webb Ross to paint the 20-by-20-foot mural.