After years of calling attention to its deteriorating courthouse building, Akron officials unveiled the new location of the Akron Municipal Court Thursday.
The court will move to the newly renovated Oliver Ocasek Building on Broadway Street in Downtown Akron Monday - just around the corner from its current location in the Harold Stubbs Justice Center.
In a ribbon-cutting event Thursday, Mayor Dan Horrigan said the project has been in the works for years.
“Finding a new courthouse was obviously at the top of the list eight years ago,” Horrigan said. “Everybody that was part of it – they did an excellent job of bringing a really good building to even a better space for the new courthouse.”
Built in 1984 and named after the former state senator, the Ocasek Building was previously owned by the state of Ohio. The building’s office spaces are already used for some city departments as well as state and county employees.
The city worked to buy the building from the state and renovate parts of it for new courtrooms and offices. The project was paid for using court fees and the Development Finance Authority of Summit County, officials said during the press briefing.
Problems with the Stubbs building plagued the courthouse years before Horrigan took office, said Akron Municipal Judge Jon Oldham.
“There were memorandums that we found in our court records that go back three decades, saying that we need a new court because the Stubbs building was not a safe design, was not a safely functioning court,” Oldham said. “Decades later, and after five or so years of really hard work from the really key players in this project, here we are today. It’s a really great day in the history of our community.”
The court worked in close quarters in the seventh, eighth and ninth floors of the building, he said. The elevators were constantly breaking down, and there were security concerns, he added.
“And when they were working, people had to ride the elevators together – judges with defendants, defendants with victims, and it was just not a good setting,” Oldham said. “Thankfully, we made it out of that building, and we’re now in a much more secure building.”
There were no spaces in the Stubbs building for attorneys to meet privately with clients, he added. In addition to confidential meeting rooms, the Ocasek building is now equipped with modern technology that will allow for remote court proceedings when necessary, he said.
“This building allows us to have it all laid out, and really allow us to create greater access to justice for all court users,” he said. “If someone can’t make it to court, we have the technology that can seamlessly allow those proceedings to still take place.”
The city’s incoming mayor Shammas Malik said he’s excited about the next chapter for the courthouse.
“This will be a very positive improvement,” Malik said. “The courtrooms are beautiful and really modern, really uses technology much better, so I think it’ll be a really big leap forward for that.”
Malik plans to decide what to do with the Stubbs building within the first sixth months of taking office, he said. It currently serves as the headquarters of the Akron Police Department.
“Everybody deserves a positive work environment in which they can thrive, and so what we’re going to be looking at is either complete renovation or looking for a different location. We’re going through that process now,” Malik said.
Malik will be sworn in Jan. 1, 2024.
The municipal court’s move to a new location also comes as the clerk of courts' office prepares for a shakeup.
Sandra Kurt defeated longtime clerk Debbie Walsh in Tuesday’s election. Walsh was appointed in 2021 after Jim Laria retired after 25 years in the role. Before Tuesday, the clerk’s office was the only Republican-held elected position in the city.
Kurt is the current Summit County Clerk of Courts.
