Family court and the annex on Richmond Terrace in St. George. (Staten Island Advance photo) .
CITY HALL -- Scaffolding lines the Island’s aging family courthouse on Richmond Terrace to prevent pieces of the building from falling off and hitting people when they walk into the more than eight decades old North Shore courthouse to seek justice.
The caseload at the courthouse has increased so much that officials are struggling to figure out where to put everyone.
Last year, an old records room, the size of a bedroom on the first floor, was converted into a makeshift courtroom.
Outside, in the courthouse’s former parking lot, a trailer was installed in recent years to house two additional courtrooms the size of a small office. And the city has spent millions over the last several years to rent out space for more courtrooms and office space on Hyatt St. because staff and attorneys who work out of family court and old Supreme Court can no longer fit into the courthouses they are supposed to work in.
Plaintiffs, defendants, attorneys and court staff often have to shuffle nearly half a mile between the Richmond Terrace family courthouse and the office space on Hyatt St. to get their cases heard or get to work.
Down the street, the front steps of the Island’s old Supreme Court, a New York City landmark building, which is about to celebrate its centennial anniversary on Friday, are cracked and often sealed off with crime scene tape or police barricades.
“That’s where families go for justice on Staten Island, it’s an incredible slap in the face to families who need their cases resolved and the support of the services that are there to have to go into that type of setting,” said Island District Attorney Michael McMahon, who for years has been pressing the city and state to rebuild and fix the Island’s courthouses.
CITY, STATE OFFICIALS PROMISED UPGRADES 2 YEARS AGO, TODAY, LITTLE HAS BEEN DONE
In 2017, city and state officials paid a visit to the borough and promised Island leaders the aging family court would be rebuilt and the old Supreme Court would be renovated.
But more than two years later, city and state officials do not know when construction on the new family courthouse will begin, exactly what it will look like, or when the new courthouse will open its doors to the public.
For years, the steps on the Island's old Supreme Court have been in a state of disrepair.
When the Richmond Family Court opened in 1931, the Island’s population was about 160,000 and has since tripled to nearly half a million residents.
Island leaders say the city and state’s inability to move construction on the new family court forward is another glaring example of the Island being left behind as the forgotten borough.
The Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice (MOCJ) could only provide a price tag for the project -- $206 million, an estimate cited last year when a “master plan” of the endeavor was completed.
However, city officials could not provide a copy of that plan to the Advance nor give any additional details about it.
“I think the problem is that there’s just not much care or concern for the people of Staten Island, I’m sorry to say it,” McMahon continued. “We need people at the Office of Court Administration and the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice to make this a priority, and I don’t think they’re doing it.”
State Sen. Diane Savino (D-North Shore) said a decade after she started working as a caseworker for New York City’s Child Welfare Administration in 1990, she saw new family courts built or renovated in the other four boroughs.
“Within the first 10 years of me working for the City of New York, Queens family court was torn down and built a brand new one … you had a new one built in Brooklyn, you had another brand new restructuring in the Bronx, and Manhattan has been renovated twice,” Savino said.
“We still don’t have one on Staten Island,” she continued, “There’s never been a commitment to Staten Island.”
Courthouses across New York State are operated by the state’s Office of Court Administration and OCA said construction and funding for courthouses is the responsibility of localities. OCA addressed specific questions related to where things stood with plans for the new family court and renovations at the old Supreme Court to City Hall.
All OCA could say was that renovations at the old Supreme Court and planning for the new family court were both underway.
“The whole thing has just stopped and nothing has been done,” said President of the New York State Court Officers Association Dennis Quirk. “Family court should have had a new building before criminal court had a building, we haven’t heard anything else since.”
McMahon said the Island’s new criminal and Supreme Court on Central Ave. are already overcapacity with not enough courtrooms, meeting rooms, or facilities.
With the state’s Raise the Age law in effect, 16 and 17-year-old accused of committing violent felony-level crimes now have their cases heard in the youth portion of criminal courts.
But McMahon said that because there is no space in Island’s criminal courthouse for a youth portion in its courtroom, many of the teen defendants accused of felony-level crimes being handled in the family court building which is already over capacity.
“It’s a very bad mix, thank god there has not been a major tragedy there,” he said.
The Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice said OCA had requested the state’s Dormitory Authority to oversee the design and construction of the new family court and will require a new funding agreement between the city and the state’s Dormitory Authority. The MOCJ said meetings between the city and DASNY were coming up to talk about this “in the near future.”
The MOCJ said it could not determine when construction would begin or when the new courthouse would open until a resolution of the funding agreement was in place.
Pressed on details about the funding agreement -- whether there was one in place, the price tag of the agreement and where things stood, the state’s Dormitory Authority could only say discussions around engagement were continuing and that DASNY welcomed future feedback on how the authority could advance the Island’s courthouse project.
On Friday, Chief Judge of Court of Appeals and of the State of New York Janet DiFiore visited the old Supreme Court to celebrate the courthouse’s 100-year anniversary.
Asked if she would commit to moving renovations at the Supreme Court and building a new family court along faster, Fiore would only say: “We are committed to assisting in any way that we possibly can."
“It is exceedingly important that we have facilities that are conducive to moving our dockets and to preside in a decent and clean and user-friendly facilities and toward that end, we work with our partners in government to achieve that goal," Fiore continued.
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