A congressional plan that allocated $181 million earlier this week to a new federal courthouse in Nashville is the first recent indication that improvements could be coming to Chattanooga's own 82-year-old federal building downtown.
Still, officials are cautious about the replacement for the Joel W. Solomon Federal Building getting funded by its scheduled 2018 date, even though the Nashville news represents a long-awaited turn in the right direction.
"At least it's movement," said U.S. District Judge Harry S. Mattice, who has advocated numerous times in the last decade to move Chattanooga's federal building to a new location. "It shows the president and Congress have shown some willingness to move."
The fiscal year 2016 Omnibus Appropriations bill unveiled earlier this week is expected to be approved by the Senate and House of Representatives and signed into law by the president. It includes the full $181.5 million for design and construction of the building planned along Church Street between Seventh and Eighth avenues in Nashville.
Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., who requested the funding for the Nashville courthouse, called the cooperation between Senate and House appropriations committees "a rare move" that "funds the courthouse all at once instead of creating uncertainty and waste by spreading the project out over several years."
A spokesman from Alexander's office said Thursday that Chattanooga's courthouse priority has not changed: it remains nine spots below Nashville, according to a five-year courthouse project plan. However, the millions being appropriated in fiscal year 2016 for federal courthouse construction "is a good sign that additional funding will continue," the spokesman said.
Other Tennessee leaders chimed in Thursday with familiar stances.
"As a Chattanoogan, Senator [Bob] Corker understands the need for a new federal courthouse," said Micah Johnson, Corker's press secretary. "Chattanooga is currently listed on the Federal Judiciary Courthouse Project Priorities list, and we will continue to monitor developments."
In Chattanooga, the beautiful but old structure has presented a danger to sitting federal judges. In November 2014, U.S. District Judge Curtis Collier narrowly avoided being nailed by a piece of falling debris in the middle of proceedings. The year before, a Times Free Press article noted the ground floor was roped off to prevent visitors from walking beneath a giant water-damaged hole in the ceiling.
Although Mattice would like to view Nashville as the beginning of a trend, he remains skeptical about the likelihood of Chattanooga being funded by 2018. He often jokes he and his predecessors have labored for 30 years to replace the courthouse.
Indeed, the U.S. General Services Administration, which constructs and maintains most federal buildings, put a new Chattanooga courthouse on its five-year construction plan back in 1999. Before that, Mattice said, the courthouse worked its way onto a construction plan in the 1970s and '80s before disappearing.
"That would be wonderful," Mattice said Thursday of any renovations. "But I don't expect it."
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