U. S. Courthouse - Kansas

Client: General Services Administration / Gastinger Walker and Associates

Site: Wichita, Kansas

The Collaborative, along with Gastinger Alker and Associates of Kansas City, Missouri, was chosen by the General Services Administration to complete a Historic Building Preservation Plan (HBPP) on the historic Wichita, Kansas Courthouse. The Wichita Courthouse is one of the gems in the federal courthouse system, having a large variety of rare marbles used throughout the facility. The purpose of the HBPP is to document the quality, scope, and condition of the various materials and systems of federal buildings. This information is then placed in the formatted database, which is available to office and field personnel. The HBPP process is not quite as extensive in its scope or intensive in its evaluation as a Historic Structure Report, but as a tool, it is easier to update as conditions change. Our firm was fortunate to have completed the Historic Structures Report for the Wichita Courthouse some years earlier. As a result of this previous work and some follow-up work in the preservation and adaptive reuse of portions of the interior, we had great familiarity with the building. In assigning the building spaces as various zones of preservation, it is critical to strike a balance between appropriate adaptive reuse and preservation of original materials and systems. As a landlord, the GSA needs as much flexibility as possible to reuse spaces in order to meet the needs of current and prospective tenants. As a federal agency, the GSA is subject to Section 106 requirements, and as a result of the National Historic Preservation Act is required to preserve and protect the attributes of a historic building. The HBPP therefore becomes the guiding document by which decisions are made on the preservation, development, and reuse of this historic building.