“Going down.”

That’s one way to describe the cost of life-safety and ADA compliance costs at the historic Third Street Courthouse in Geneva that include the replacement of a 65-year-old elevator.

Kane County’s 158-year-old courthouse is poised to get about $1.5 million life-safety and Americans With Disabilities Act improvements that include the long-awaited elevator — at a price that’s about $284,000 less in today’s dollars than the estimated 2013 cost for the elevator alone.

Operations Staff Executive Don Biggs said Tuesday that he was able to find cost savings by replacing the existing elevator rather than adding a new one.

In a Tuesday-afternoon report to the Kane County Board Committee of the Whole, Biggs said the 65-year-old elevator was past its serviceable life. It was not compliant with the Americans With Disabilities Act, and its cab was too small to accommodate a gurney for emergency rescue.

Biggs said the work has to be done.

“If we don’t go forward with this, sooner or later, we will have to do an emergency replacement on this elevator,” he said.

Chief Judge Judy Brawka said she was grateful that Biggs and Cordogan Clark architects and engineers were able to find cost-effective solutions to issues that had plagued the courthouse since 2012.

She added that the 90 staff members who work at the courthouse are not the only people who would benefit from the improvements. She told the Committee of the Whole that the courthouse was open 247 days in 2014, and more than 13,200 cases were filed and heard at the courthouse last year. The 13,000-plus figure did not include cases that were still pending, “which really doubles that number,” she said.

The total number of 2014 staff member and public visitors to the courthouse was estimated at more than 170,000.

At previous meetings, city of Geneva Deputy Fire Chief Mark Einwich expressed concerns about being able to fight a third-floor fire. The revised plan addresses those concerns by constructing along the elevator shaft a standpipe from which firefighters can draw water rather than hooking up hoses to a tanker truck.

A new standpipe also would be installed along with fire-rated doors in the north and south stairwells of the building.

Other improvements include first-, second- and third-floor public-toilet ADA upgrades, increased size and new finishes for a third-floor Jury Assembly Room and IT upgrades and cleanup.

The estimated cost of the 2013 elevator project was more than $1.60 million in today’s dollars. The total project cost estimate for the 2015 life-safety and elevator project package is less than $1.32 million.

The next step for the project is approval from the full County Board, tentatively scheduled for Feb. 10. If all goes forward without a hitch, construction could begin as soon as March 2, and work could be completed by July 31.

You can see the full PowerPoint presentation the Committee of the Whole agenda packet.