1 Ugly Courthouse T-Shirt At A Time May Save Building: Ferak

JOLIET, IL — Whether he wants to admit it or not, Hudson Hollister is the leader of an unpopular movement in Joliet — saving the empty 1969-era Will County Courthouse from being bulldozed.

When I'm out in the community, I rarely encounter people suggesting the old Will County Courthouse, closed since November 2020, needs to be redeveloped and given a fresh start.

On the other hand, elected officials on the Will County Board, along with Will County Executive Jennifer Bertino-Tarrant, are indecisive. You vote them into office, and they continue to reward your trust by not getting things accomplished.

Even though Will County's elected officials voted in 2019 to demolish the courthouse, coinciding with the completion of the new $215 million Will County Courthouse, the four-story concrete monstrosity remains vacant three years later.

Will County's politicians just don't have it in them to get the building torn down. But they want you to think they want to tear it down.

And that's where Hollister enters the picture.

Whether you like Hollister or not, you have to give him credit for being persistent. Yes, he can be a little irritating, but his heart is in the right place when it comes to saving the old Will County Courthouse and making Joliet a better community.

To his credit, Hollister's not looking to milk the taxpayers of Joliet when it comes to saving the old Will County Courthouse. Rather, he is looking to businesses and private investors to make this into a public-private partnership.

Theoretically, he said, Will County government can still retain ownership of the courthouse while other businesses and companies choose to locate inside. Even though it's an ugly building, he believes it doesn't have to stay that way.

He intends to put a bar and restaurant on the rooftop.

And he also wants to have a food court inside the courthouse featuring an array of Joliet-area restaurants, not fast-food chains like Burger King, McDonald's or Taco Bell.

While Bertino and the Will County Board continue to do nothing in terms of tearing the courthouse down, Hollister continues to attract attention toward his redevelopment push.

Hollister has a yellow T-shirt proclaiming "VISIT WILL COUNTY Home Of The World's Ugliest Courthouse." He said the T-shirts were designed by Greg Peerbolte, director of the Joliet Area Historical Museum.

Now, if you Google "World's Ugliest Courthouse," the top Internet searches come up with news reports from NBC Channel 5 in Chicago, a lengthy article from the architecture critic for the Chicago Sun-Times and a report published in the Daily Beast.

Hollister told me his initial T-shirt run was less than 100. He's selling them for $25 as a fund-raiser for his redevelop campaign to save the old courthouse.

Given their popularity, Hollister said he will continue to produce more of them.

"It's kind of funny, but it sure does stand out," Hollister said. "And we want to celebrate things in our town that are very unique. I believe it can be redeveloped into a community destination that is unique to this area."

I told Hollister if he were smart, he'd get a hold of the Joliet Park District, so he can have a T-shirt stand during the June 24-26 Taste of Joliet at Memorial Stadium. After all, Taste of Joliet typically draws more than 55,000 people over the three-day weekend.

"We sold out of the first run ... and we've had dozens of inquiries, so we're doing a second run," Hollister informed me Tuesday. "Our Facebook post announcing them got 5,500 impressions."

Right now, the biggest obstacle standing in Hollister's way is money.

He does not have several million dollars in capital stashed away under his mattress to make his private-public partnership into an overnight success.

"We have developers talking to us," Hollister told me. "But developers want to see some kind of (Request for Information) or (Request for Proposal) from the county."

For those of you thinking Hollister's ridiculous, consider this: when Will County voted in 2019 to tear the courthouse down, the estimated cost was $1.5 million, Hollister explained.

Now, thanks to soaring inflation and other costs, the present-day cost to demolish the courthouse is probably closer to $6 million to $10 million because of asbestos removal and relocating the ComEd substation on the property, Hollister estimated.

Any and all of those demolition costs would be funded by the taxpayers.

In some respects, Hollister's save the ugly Will County Courthouse movement reminds me of that obnoxious "Baby Shark" song.

I hate that song because it's so darn annoying. The same is can be about Hollister's save the ugly courthouse campaign.

A year ago, I could not envision anyone riding an elevator to the courthouse rooftop to drink a margarita or indulge in a bucket of Corona bottles with friends. I had a difficult time grasping the concept of private companies fighting each other to occupy office space on floors two, three and four of the empty downtown Joliet courthouse.

But like it not, Hollister is probably here to stay. If that's the case, everyone in Joliet needs to get one of his "Home of the World's Ugliest Courthouse" T-shirts.

"This building belongs to the people of Will County. Some people call it ugly, but it is unmistakable," Hollister told me.

"We think the economy and the people of Will County will benefit more from a mixed use redevelopment than from demolition and a blank space. And the county has not budgeted for this demolition," Hollister stressed.