Chatsworth Courthouse

They built Los Angeles' most modern jail and then locked the place shut and threw away the key. That is the assertion of a Los Angeles County civil grand jury, which is demanding to know why a lockup in Chatsworth sits unoccupied as other county jails are releasing prisoners early because of overcrowding. "State of the art" cells engineered to accommodate 350 prisoners sit unused beneath the Chatsworth Courthouse, jurors said.

The Los Angeles County Superior Court is considering transferring criminal cases from the Chatsworth courthouse and closing its lockup, in an effort to cope with a $57-million shortfall for this year. Closing the lockup would save about $1 million in security costs annually, court officials said last week. Also, courthouses in Monrovia and Culver City may be closed or converted into customer service centers for an additional $600,000 in savings, said L.A.

Re "Courts Face Closures, Job Cuts," Aug. 27: I don't get it. We will have to close 29 courtrooms and lay off 168 employees. So why did we have to spend more than $90 million on the Chatsworth courthouse? It's an extravagant building that wasted lots of money for expensive granite yet contains too few (only eight) tiny courtrooms for the space it occupies and the money it cost. So where are the logic and the planning? Stephany Yablow Sherman Oaks

After years of delay, the $98-million Chatsworth courthouse is almost complete, but no one knows for sure when it will open for business. Presiding Judge James A. Bascue said the Los Angeles County Superior Court needs more state money for staffing. Without it, he said, the court may have to further delay opening the building. "It would be tragic to have a courthouse, ready to serve the community, without the staff to service it," Bascue said.

Groundbreaking for a long-awaited county courthouse in Chatsworth, scheduled to be built in the early 1990s until fiscal woes ground the project to a halt, will officially take place Thursday morning, county officials announced. The $59-million Municipal Court building will go up on a vacant 9-acre parcel of land at 9425 Penfield Ave., near the corner of Winnetka Ave. and Prairie Street. It is scheduled to open in October 2001.

Los Angeles County staff has completed its environmental review of the proposed Chatsworth courthouse and has determined that all the negative impact can be mitigated. But Harry Godley, chairman of the Chatsworth Homeowners Committee, said Monday that the group will continue to battle the project. "We are terribly disappointed and we think it's wrong," Godley said. "They haven't thoroughly considered the alternate sites at all and they are in total disregard of the community and its feelings."

Los Angeles County supervisors Tuesday approved spending $12.3 million to buy the site of the future Chatsworth courthouse, despite longstanding opposition from residents of neighborhoods nearby. Four of the five supervisors were unswayed by more than two hours of testimony before the board, which included a San Fernando resident's claim that building a county courthouse in her community "ruined our city."

Los Angeles County supervisors have approved spending $12.3 million to buy the site of the future Chatsworth courthouse, despite longstanding opposition from residents of neighborhoods nearby. The $51.5-million courthouse will primarily serve residents of the West Valley, who now must go to Van Nuys or San Fernando for court business.

Los Angeles County court officials have commissioned a poll by telephone of west San Fernando Valley residents this week in an effort to show there is widespread support for a proposal to build a new municipal courthouse in Chatsworth.

A Municipal Court administrator appeared before about 100 angry opponents of a proposed Chatsworth courthouse Monday night in an attempt to present the case for building the court--on condition they did not get to debate the issue. In his first appearance at a public forum, Robert Quist, a deputy court administrator, agreed to present his case if the audience did not present rebuttals, Quist confirmed.