Court consolidation could be slowed due to federal budget Ills. (Up Front).

Federal funding for a proposed $400 million federal courthouse in downtown L.A. could e delayed by a year or more due to budget concerns.

Such a delay could push back the scheduled completion date of the long-awaited courthouse from mid-2008 to 2009 or even later. This, in turn, would force the now-overcrowded Southern California federal courts to wait longer for relief, slowing up court cases. It also would drive up the ultimate cost of the project.

The proposed federal courthouse would be built on the site of the old State Office Building on the southwest corner of First Street and Broadway. It would consolidate the Central District federal courts -- now at both the existing federal courthouse and the Roybal Federal Building -- into one 20-story, 1.1-million-square-foot building. An at a revised $414 million cost, it would mark the single largest investment in the downtown civic center to date.

Last week, state and federal officials announced an agreement for transfer of the state land to federal control.

The state is selling the land to the federal government for $2.5 million, well below market value, according to the state Consumer Services Agency, which is responsible for state land. The state will put $500,000 of the $2.5 million in an escrow account to pay for asbestos abatement of the old State Office Building on the site. The federal government will be responsible for the rest of the demolition costs.

"The land transfer is an essential step for this project," said Dan Rosenfeld, partner in the downtown real estate firm Urban Partners. "So often these projects get stalled when one level of government gets caught up in a dispute with another level of government."

But securing the funding is likely to prove more difficult. Eighteen months ago, after two years of effort, the California congressional delegation won the appropriation of $34.5 million of federal money for design and land acquisition. That allowed the U.S. General Services Administration to contract with the Santa Monica office of the architectural firm of Perkins & Will for initial design work, which is now in progress.

But demolition of the old State Office Building and construction of the courthouse itself must wait for additional federal funds. And with several years of budget deficits projected, funding may be hard to come by.

"The merits of the new courthouse are not the issue," said one local federal official tracking the project. "It's the sheer size of the appropriation in question and the fact that it must be requested as a single appropriation up-front. As a result, there's a good chance that we won't get the funding in the President's 2003 budget that's now being readied."

Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard, D-Los Angeles, who has led the fight to secure the funding, said last week she hopes that Congress will insert the courthouse funding into the appropriations bill for the General Services Administration.

But every month of delay pushes up the cost. When first proposed back in the early 1990s, the courthouse was estimated to cost around $300 million. But, with the two-year delay in initial design and acquisition funding, the cost went up. The September terrorist attacks have also prompted new security features in the building.