Okaloosa County has been vindicated in its assertion that it never abandoned its courthouse annex in Shalimar.
Florida’s First District Court of Appeals went along last week with a circuit court’s ruling and rejected the Meigs family trust’s effort to have the land on which the annex complex stands returned to it.
The family argued the county violated a reverter clause built into a deed drawn in 1973. The deed gave the land on which the Shalimar annex now stands to the county for as long as a courthouse function was maintained at the property.
When the county mostly vacated the annex in October 2011 in favor of the new Courthouse Annex Extension on the Northwest Florida Fairgrounds property in Fort Walton Beach, the family claimed the reverter clause had been violated.
The county argued it had no intention of leaving the annex building mostly empty and that it expected to use about 15,000 square feet of the 66,000-square-foot complex for courthouse functions.
The appeals court agreed.
“There is no evidence that constructing the annex extension somehow precludes continued judicial use of the annex,” the judges said in their ruling, citing case law that states “reduction of use or even non-use is not in itself abandonment.”
While the Meigs family still has time to request a rehearing, plans are moving steadily forward to begin filling a renovated Shalimar annex building.
County Administrator Jim Curry said a “design and build team” expects to present its plans for modernizing and revitalizing the annex, built in 1976, at the County Commission’s second meeting in March.
Newly invested Circuit Court Judge Mary Polson and Okaloosa County Court Operations Manager Alicia Wardlow represent Florida’s First Judicial Circuit on the task force deciding what to do with the Shalimar annex.
Circuit Court Judge William Stone, Okaloosa’s administrative judge, said the task force and county have “shown great deference” in allowing those representing the judiciary to decide what its presence at the annex will be.
“The only request we have made is to ask that they please use their facilities at the annex to conduct the full gamut of judicial proceedings,” Curry said, indicating that hearings, motions, mediation and actual trials all should be conducted in whatever space in Shalimar is allocated to the courts.
At this juncture, Wardlow said, discussions have revolved primarily around using the Shalimar annex for family law or juvenile court proceedings.
“There’s been discussion on that,” she said. “We haven’t hammered out all the details.”
One consideration, Wardlow said, is the ease of movement for children within the one-floor annex structure.
Stone said it isn’t likely the judicial function in Shalimar will return to any of the four big courtrooms where major cases were heard before the move to the annex extension.
The county’s tax collector, property appraiser, clerk of court, supervisor of elections and sheriff’s office could also be among those occupying space within the renovated Shalimar annex, Curry said.
“We just want to be careful not to try to put ten pounds of potatoes into a five-pound bag,” he said. “We’re trying to determine who will fit and who won’t.”
Contact Daily News Staff Writer Tom McLaughlin at 850-315-4435 or tmclaughlin@nwfdailynews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TomMnwfdn.
This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: Court sides with county over Shalimar courthouse annex