04:18 PM CDT on Saturday, April 8, 2006

Associated Press

NEW ORLEANS — The historic, massive Orleans Parish Court building, with its giant columns and art deco features, may have some courtrooms in use by next month, city officials have learned.

The courthouse at Tulane Avenue and South Broad Street has been closed since Hurricane Katrina, which flooded its basement.

However, workers from the Shaw Group plan to go into the building on Monday, and barring unforeseen delays, several courtrooms and other key offices should be ready for occupancy by May 1.

Although judges have been using a room at the U.S. District Court to hold hearings, they can't hold jury trials there.

Before Katrina, Judge Camille Buras said, the court had 3,500 inmates awaiting trial. It has been able to handle fewer than 200 cases a week at federal court.

"We are way past due process times," she said.

Councilwoman Cynthia Hedge-Morrell said the nearly broke city should not worry about the cost of getting the building up and running again.

"We have to do whatever needs to be done," she said.

Deputy Chief Administrative Officer Cynthia Sylvain-Lear said the city first told the Shaw Group to move into the building Oct. 21, but when its people got there, they found another company, Nationwide, already at work under a contract with FEMA.

The city told Shaw to "stand down," but insisted the city should retain responsibility for managing and restoring the courthouse and the buildings used by other elements of the criminal justice system, Sylvain-Lear said.

"The city now is in control of the restoration of these buildings," she said.

The city awarded Moses Engineering a $2.5 million contract to figure out what work needed to be done to get the courthouse back into operation. It later amended a previous contract to let Sharp Electric get temporary power back to some courtrooms and offices, Sylvain-Lear said.

She could not immediately say how much the Sharp contract or the Shaw Group's cleanup work will cost, but said the Shaw workers will be on the job for double shifts seven days a week. Their work is scheduled to take 21 days.

One problem is that some of the work supposedly done as part of the original cleanup remains unfinished, Sylvain-Lear said. For instance, she said, there is still water at the bottom of elevator shafts.