Miami-Dade expects a 40-year recertification for its courthouse, nearly 50 years late

Miami-Dade County finally is ready to have its 1928 courthouse pass its 40-year recertification — nearly 50 years late.

The county recently submitted its recertification application to Miami for the downtown building, which is set to reopen about five months after court administrators closed it following a post-Surfside engineering inspection.

The courthouse is scheduled to reopen Dec. 6, after county engineers said recent inspections of columns in the basement found no reason to keep the county’s main civil courthouse closed.

The only remaining hurdle to the delayed recertification is closing out a city permit for recent work in the courthouse basement, a county administrator said Thursday.

“As soon as the permit for the basement destructive testing is closed and final, the County expects the City of Miami to approve and issue the 40-year recertification,” said Alex Alfonso, acting assistant director for Miami-Dade’s Internal Services Department. Representatives of Miami’s Building Department were not immediately available to comment.

The county’s main civil courthouse — so old it once housed a trial for Al Capone — has been closed since July 9. The closure came after an engineer flagged possible structural issues in an inspection ordered after the June 24 Surfside condo collapse raised concerns about older buildings.

Other engineers hired by Miami-Dade quickly concluded the building was safe for regular occupancy, but judges in the state court system objected to reopening right away. One demand from judges was a plan for getting the 27-story building recertified.

An Oct. 15 engineering report by the county-hired firm EXP found no structural concerns with steel columns in the flood-prone basement. Fourteen were selected for “destructive” inspection — where workers expose parts of the interior of the columns — and “were observed to be in good condition and did not exhibit significant deterioration or corrosion.”

Securing a recertification from Miami would end one of the more embarrassing sagas related to a county building in recent years. According to an Inspector General report, officials pursued the required recertification for the courthouse shortly after the county required them for all older buildings in 1975, but then the matter “somehow fell off the County’s radar” until recent years.

The issue got put on the front burner in 2014 as judges and the legal industry were pressing Miami-Dade commissioners and then-Mayor Carlos Gimenez to build a replacement courthouse instead of trying to keep the existing one functional. County leaders ultimately agreed to the new $267 million building in 2019, and construction is expected to finish by the end of 2024.

In her statement this week announcing the planned reopening of the courthouse on Dec. 6, Chief Judge Nushin Sayfie emphasized that the county is endorsing the building’s readiness.

“Our first priority was and continues to be the safety of all who work at and visit the Dade County Courthouse,” she said. “Based upon the assurances we have received from the County that the building is safe, we are happy to be able to reopen the Dade County Courthouse and resume normal operations there beginning December 6.”

This story was originally published November 19, 2021 at 11:18 AM with the headline "Miami-Dade expects a 40-year recertification for its courthouse, nearly 50 years late."