Move Sedgwick County HQ out of downtown, or maybe to former Central Library?

In about two months, Sedgwick County offices will be moving to a new home at the landmark Ruffin building downtown.

So it’s time to start looking for a new, new home for the county.

It may seem a little early to be talking about this, given that the county hasn’t even gotten into the Ruffin Building yet.

It’s not.

The Ruffin Building is a short-term solution to a long-term problem: Where to put county government offices that are vacating the crowded County Courthouse to make more space for courtrooms and prosecutors.

The problem has been festering at least 10 years and the county’s been seriously looking for a new place for the last five.

Last year, the county entered into a $4.1 million sale agreement for the former Riverside Hospital building at 2622 W. Central. The county pulled out after evaluating what it would cost to turn it into a legitimate center of government.

It was more or less a rerun of 2018, when the county negotiated buying a mirrored glass office tower at 345 N. Riverview, but balked at the high cost of repairing the place.

Commissioners considered building new office space on the courthouse grounds, but that didn’t go anywhere either because of an estimated $40 million-$50 million price tag.

It’s questionable whether they’d be even moving at all without a windfall of federal COVID-19 relief funds that will pay the $2.8 million cost to renovate a couple of floors in the Ruffin Building and pay the rent for three years.

With the county’s track record of failed acquisitions and construction costs that can only be higher than they were last time around, Commissioner Jim Howell has begun to float a previously unimaginable idea: Move the county offices out of downtown Wichita.

Howell makes a good case, that downtown has gotten too expensive and the county could get a much better deal a little farther out.

He figures a suitable building could be picked up within a 5-10 mile radius of downtown in the $4 million-$5 million range, that wouldn’t need the extensive rebuilding that plagues old buildings downtown.

And, he says, if they could pick up something reasonably close to a freeway, the travel time to get to and from the county government would actually be reduced for most employees and patrons compared to the current location.

He’s onto something there. For the past 10 years or better, the city government has concentrated its downtown transportation efforts on “traffic calming,” municipal planning jargon for slowing everything down.

While that has safety benefits, it makes it harder and more time consuming to get into, out of and through downtown.

The courthouse, while centrally located on a map, is not particularly easy to get to from any direction.

We think there’s another option also worth considering: The former Central Library.

It’s centrally located and freeway close, vacant, structurally sound, reasonably up to date and it has the architectural gravitas of a real government center instead of a dressed-up commercial building.

Wichita Mayor Brandon Whipple says the county’s never asked the city about it, but “it’s a good question and would be worth examining . . . it’s a great asset.”

Vacant after the library moved out in 2018, the building was pressed into service for the pandemic and people who got their COVID shots there gave it high marks for style and class.

Maybe it’s practical, maybe it’s not. It needs a feasibility study and price appraisal.

But if the county is to pay millions for a building anyway, why not flow those dollars to the city, which can spend the proceeds on public purposes?

One potential problem is it’s on the tear-down list for the Riverfront Legacy Master Plan, a proposal to rework much of the east bank of the Arkansas river south of Douglas, with new convention and performing art centers and private businesses.

But it’s an open question whether the Riverfront plan will regain the momentum it had before it was shelved for the pandemic.

If it does, maybe they could find a way to work around a new county government center.

This story was originally published April 18, 2022 at 10:00 AM.