FEDERAL COURTHOUSE
9
LEGAL COMMUNITY
SPOTLIGHT
SUSAN BURGESS
Former Mayor William Dannahower was well aware of the
commercial possibilities when he went fishing for a federal
courthouse in 1987, but first he had to make sure the county
didn’t move its courthouse from South Second Street to Port
St. Lucie and that the state didn’t build its Clem C. Benton
building there either.
Dannahower hooked the first federal court for Fort Pierce.
It opened in the old post office building on Orange Avenue
and Sixth Street, where it operated out of a single room.
“Mayor Dannahower and Mayor Eddie Enns and then I,
when I became mayor, worked on this over a span of 20 years
or so before we broke ground for the new courthouse building
in 2009,” Benton says. “After Mayor Dannahower left
office, Mayor Enns appointed him to a committee to continue
to work on getting the courthouse here.”
DELAY IN PLANS
Plans were drawn up for a courthouse building, but the 1995
Oklahoma City bombing stopped that, Benton says. “It was
a matter of adding more security to the building plans. The
bombing stopped courthouses all over the country from being
built. And after that there were federal budget problems.”
With everything on hold and the need for space growing,
the court moved into the former Southeast Bank building on
South Sixth Street and Boston Avenue. It stayed there until
the new building was ready.
The combined effort to obtain funding for the courthouse
was huge and took numerous trips to Washington, Benton said,
adding that the bipartisan support included three mayors, three
city managers, four senators and five congressmen from the
Republican and Democratic parties, and 10 city commissioners.
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From the roundabout on Indian River Drive at Avenue A, the St. Lucie
County Clerk of Court’s offices are on the right and the Renaissance
residential, office and retail complex is on the left. They are part of the
economic revival of the historic downtown.
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