CRESTVIEW — Thick law books are stacked in piles on the floor with “recycle” tags taped on top. The entrance’s X-ray equipment is gone, its footprint remaining in the green terrazzo floor.
Flags have been removed from Courtroom A, but past county judges still glare from faded photos at the empty landing outside the courtroom.
On April 4, the last Crestview courthouse occupants left the building. Wednesday, county Public Works officials led a final walk-through.
Building supervisor Gary Glenn joined them, adding anecdotes from his observations.
“I’ve been cleaning it for 23 years and it has changed tremendously,” Glenn said. “The basement was a fallout shelter before the additions were built. I’ve been here in hurricanes. This building can stand up to a hurricane.”
What it couldn’t stand up to, Public Works Director Jason Autrey said, is time.
SEPARATE FACILITIES
“The building was built for segregation, not air conditioning,” Autrey said as the inspection tour wended around the basement where 1950s and ’60s equipment still rumbles, most of the key machinery on its last legs for lack of replacement parts.
In the main axis, three public bathrooms are a reminder of 1950s society.
One, originally the white men’s room, has six stalls and four urinals. Another, once just for white women, has three stalls. The third, with two stalls and a urinal, was another woman’s room until the courthouse’s closure. In the 1950s it was shared by black men and women.
“Segregation’s why you see two drinking fountains on each floor,” Glenn said.
FINAL PHASES
The courthouse will undergo three final phases, beginning with hazardous materials abatement, Autrey said.
The county will shortly issue a bid request for asbestos removal, he said. The once prevalent material lurks in floor tiles, wrapped around pipes, in the ceiling and probably in places yet to be discovered, he said.
Additionally, black mold has been found throughout the building. It is hard to tell how far it has permeated the mechanical and structural systems, Autrey said.
“The good thing about mold … is the way to get rid of it is to get rid of the building,” Autrey said.
After abatement is completed, reusable materials will be removed, including fire-rated solid-core doors, more than 30 fire extinguishers, water fountains, moveable partitions, courtroom benches, security cameras, brass railings from Courtroom A, and remaining furniture.
“We will really scavenge everything out of this building that we can,” Autrey said. “Every little thing we can take out and reuse we will.”
Some materials can be sold for revenue, while metals, including unknown yards of copper pipe and even rebar exposed as the building is demolished, can be recycled.
SALVAGING
During abatement and scavenging, there will be little change to the courthouse’s outward appearance.
But once those steps are done — probably by August or September — the third phase, demolition, will begin, and that won’t take long, Autrey said.
“Then people will drive by and go, ‘Whoa, where’d it go?’” he said.
Two of the building’s features have generated inquiries, Autrey said.
“We’ve already had several people ask if they could have the old phone booth,” Autrey said. “We’ve even had one employee say, ‘Hey, if you put it in the new building I’ll even put a phone in it.”
Others ask about the hundreds of square feet of marble wall cladding. But until the abatement process is over, workers won’t be able to examine them to see how they’re mounted, and if they can be removed without damage, Autrey said.
Glenn said previous efforts to salvage the marble have failed.
“When they tried to remove that marble to make the (Okaloosa County) commission’s room, every piece of it cracked,” he said.
NOW, ‘THE SIMPLE PART’
The hardest part of the courthouse replacement process — relocating the building’s previous occupants — is over, Autrey said.
“The logistics of where everybody had to go was daunting,” he said. “Now we have to do the simple part, which is deal with an empty building, demolish it and build a new building.”
But right before the Crestview courthouse is demolished, it will serve one more public benefit.
“The courthouse security wants to do an active shooter scenario,” Autrey said, during which Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office courthouse officers will hold a training exercise in the building.
“I told them, once you get it, you can do anything you want to it. The wrecking ball comes Monday.”
This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: Countdown to Crestview courthouse's demolition begins
