11-21-2024 10:32am

City Proposes Fun Center Modification to Fire Department and Magistrate Court Complex

Chris Edwards Editor

The county is set to move the Otero County Courthouse Plans are swiftly moving for the construction of a new courthouse to serve the 12th Judicial District in Otero County.

The project in Alamogordo may ultimately cost as much as $30 million to complete and will go up off the Charlie T. Lee Memorial Relief Route, just to the north of the Mesa Verde Ranch Road.

The anticipated 45,000-square-foot building will house four courtrooms and two hearing rooms, with additional space set for security operations and administrative offices.

The current 12th District courthouse is located at 100 N. New York Avenue and is regarded as not being up to current needs, with a lack of space, and no sprinkler system. Additional reported problems have included holding cell issues and both heating and cooling systems deficiencies.

The courthouse was completed in early 1956 and formally inaugurated in June of that year.

Controversy regarding the condition of the building has been ongoing for nearly a decade but reached a boiling point in 2018 when the 12th Judicial Court began legal proceedings against Otero County, arguing that the county was failing to provide adequate facilities as required by state law.

That lawsuit partly resulted in the hiring of a consultant tasked with conducting a feasibility study on how much it would cost to upgrade the facility.

The decision to build an entirely new facility won the approval of the Otero County Commission more than a year ago, resulting in the Las Cruces-based ASA Architects being brought in to design the structure.

Now the city of Alamogordo is considering a bold move to solve a problem with the Alamogordo Fun Center Albatross that is still embroiled in litigation. A proposal before the city for consideration is to make the building into a Fire Department, Municipal Court, Police Substation and other city annex offices. A new fire department station is required soon for the Mesa Verde area due to the amount of development and planned development for the area. The expense to build a new fire station could be as much as $9 Million the cost to transition the existing city owned building would cost only around $2 Million and save the taxpayers millions.

There are multiple proposals for the fun center on the agenda and yet the most economically sensible is the conversion to fire department, magistrate court and police substation.

Selling the property more than likely would be bring in much less than the valuation of the property and take considerable time.

An alternative operator is a consideration but not seen as a sound business investment to most operators due to deficiencies in lane size for sanctioned league play. A city led operation is not feasible.

Commissioner Sharon McDonald is championing to use it as a public safety complex to save the taxpayers millions on a new fire station and to have a fun center type facility located in city center possibly on New York Avenue in an existing vacant building that could be converted.

A copy of a conceptual drawing of the fun center conversion to a public safety center can be seen below…