A water leak in the Municipal Building prompted the relocation of the General District Court Judge and clerk’s offices from the first floor to the second floor.
Cases pending in Martinsville’s General District Court now will be heard in the Martinsville City Council Chambers, which is located in Room 201, on the second floor.
Court hours are unchanged; telephone and fax numbers also are the same.
“Temporarily, we’ve relocated the (General District Court) judge to a new office, the clerks, and we are also moving court up to the council chambers until we can truly assess what is going on,” City Manager Aretha Ferrell-Benavides said.
Kendall Davis, public information officer, said the decision to relocate the offices was made last week when employees noticed damp ceiling tiles and city officials became aware of a water leak. An investigation began immediately, and determined the leak was caused by HVAC pipe condensation.
“I got a call saying we have a problem, and the tiles are wet,” Ferrell-Benavides said. “We pulled the tiles back and saw they (pipes) were sweating from the AC unit.”
By then, the leak had been going on for a while, hidden by the ceiling tiles.
“By the time we really got aware of it, they were moist to a point where they were falling down,” Ferrell-Benavides said, adding that city crews began taking the tiles down. An air quality test was administered to determine whether there were any safety issues, with the potential for mold among the concerns. Results are anticipated later in the week, officials added.
“Is it something that is dangerous? We don’t know, but we don’t think so,” Ferrell-Benavides said. “Everyone’s healthy and safe. Right now, everyone’s safe, but after we get the air quality, we will figure out what steps to take next to make sure it stays so.”
Meanwhile, damaged tiles will be removed, and pipes will be insulated to ensure the problem doesn’t return, Ferrell-Benavides said, and added “we moved the folks out of their space into a temporary space because we are going to fix it, but we are going to fix it right.”
The building was built in 1968 and has undergone other repairs.
“It wasn’t the first time that this has happened,” Ferrell-Benavides said, and noted that city officials are “working on quotes now with construction folks about what it’s going to cost to get all of those pipes covered and, if necessary, replaced.”
She noted that “constant preventive maintenance is required on this building, and we are trying to address this as quickly as possible with limited resources.” Employee safety is the most important to the council, and “we will take the proper steps to make sure everybody is in a safe environment.”
It’s not yet known whether relocation of the court may impact ongoing cases or city council meetings, and the timeline for repairs is up in the air – from a month up to a year, she said.
“Right now, I don’t have an estimate, I don’t want to half fix it and have this problem again,” Ferrell-Benavides said, adding that she wants to make sure the city is “addressing the problem” to prevent a recurrence.
Space was a problem even before the HVAC leak, Ferrell-Benavides said offices were crowded, with some of the office spaces doing double duty – largely due to filling vacant positions.
“In replacing and filling these positions, we have had vacancies for about a year and a half in some cases, and now we are just trying to fill our vacancies, and we just need space to put the people,” Ferrell-Benavides said, and added that the city is considering the possibility of using some space in the former BB&T building in the future.
Built in 1959 and touted as the tallest building in Martinsville, the city purchased the former bank building after learning it would be demolished. In 2022, city officials and JRS Realty Partners announced the building would be renamed One Ellsworth and transformed into residential and commercial space.
If “we would move there, we would be paying to move,” because the city would pay rent just as any other tenant, Martinsville Mayor LC Jones said.
Discussions began after city officials learned the building needs “a certain percentage of residential and a certain percentage of retail” or commercial entities, Jones said.
“We’ve also looked at other opportunities in Uptown,” Jones said, adding several properties are being considered.
For instance, the city also would like to set up a satellite office for members of its Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) unit, which would allow those officers to be out in the community.
“We just offered that. It’s nothing set in stone,” he said, adding discussions are ongoing, and firm decisions are “still up in the air,” he said.
The water leak is a “bad situation, but it’s also good,” Jones said, because it pushes discussions about space and potentially relocating some offices “to the forefront.”
As the city deals with the current space crunch, Jones said he does not anticipate the relocation to impact city council meetings. The court ends at 5 p.m., and meetings begin at 7 p.m.
