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November 12, 2009

New federal courthouse dedicated in downtown Terre Haute

By Howard Greninger

TERRE HAUTE — A new federal courthouse was officially dedicated Thursday amid federal judges, Terre Haute attorneys and city officials.

The new courthouse at 921 Ohio St. rests on a 1.9-acre site at 91/2 and Ohio streets. The one-story brick building with stone facade has 14,310 square feet, according to a fact sheet at the ceremony from the U.S. General Services Administration.

The courthouse was built by Thompson Thrift Development Corp., which will pay property taxes. Thompson Thrift is leasing the facility to the federal government under a 20-year lease. The annual rent is $570,598, according to the GSA fact sheet.

U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Frank J. Otte said the courthouse “is a success story, the result of the work of very many people. It was brought about, things like this just don’t happen, but it was brought about because there were people in the community” who worked to keep the courts, he said.

Otte said the former courthouse, at Seventh and Cherry streets, which will become part of Indiana State University, was made in the Art Deco style of the 1930s, while the new courthouse has a “Williamsburg look.”

“The only real constant in life is change, and yet we all resist it,” Otte said.

“There are differences, changes from the old” courthouse, he said, commenting on how he had to solicit help from security officials to enter the new building with new security devices.

“They said all you have to do is remember your PIN number. But when you get a little senior, you don’t use the number, you use the sequence,” Otte said.

“Well, when you walk up to the machine out here and put your card against it, the numbers change. And if you are slow about it, the numbers change again, so every time you look at the sequence, they are different,” Otte said.

“The 2 goes to the top, then to the bottom and the 5 moves to the right. I learned how to do it and I must say that it was kinda interesting to have nostalgia for a key,” he joked.

Otte said he wondered about people in 1935, when the former federal courthouse first opened in Terre Haute, if they had a similar experience. “Did somebody walk to the elevator and look at that and say, ‘aaaah, I’m not getting in that box,’” he said.

“That is the change that we live with and is the aspect of life that we can’t truly get away from,” Otte said. He said the new courthouse “is a new look and I like it.”

Otte and U.S. District Judge Larry J. McKinney each thanked Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., for working to secure the new courthouse in Terre Haute. McKinney, who served as chief judge of the Southern District of Indiana from 2001 to 2007, was part of a group that worked closely on the project.

“The very fact of this building’s existence is a slap in the face of cynics and naysayers and nabobs of negativism, if you don’t mind me quoting Spiro Agnew,” McKinney said, saying approval had to be made from numerous federal agencies.

“Our goal was to have a quality facility that is not an insult to the taxpayer and one that is within the budget that we had. There were serious perimeters. This building had to be within the same cost perimeters to the court as the old building,” he said.

“The process of getting this building here is not unlike pulling Excalibur out of the stone. Only those who were hard-working people of goodwill and had some vision of the future could pull that sword out of the stone. I am telling you there were a lot of them” who made the courthouse happen, McKinney said.

McKinney said he has family ties to Terre Haute, saying his father graduated from ISU in 1938 and his grandfather from ISU in 1903. His parents also married in Terre Haute, he said.

“My father said after you get out of school, the concept of intelligence changes. In school it is grades … intelligence when you are out is measured by the ability to get things done. If that is true, Laura Briggs [Clerk of the Court for the U.S. District Court, Southern District of Indiana] is the smartest damn clerk in the United States,” McKinney said, commenting on how she worked to get finances in line for the new courthouse.



Howard Greninger can be reached at (812) 231-4204 or howard.greninger@tribstar.com

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