After more than six years of planning, design and construction, the Ventura Superior Court’s new Juvenile Courthouse will open for business on Mon., March 28. It will be located at the Justice Steven Z. Perren Juvenile Justice Complex, 4333 Vineyard Ave., Oxnard.

Planning for the Juvenile Courthouse began in 1998 when then- Presiding Judge Charles Campbell and former court executive officer Sheila Gonzalez initiated negotiations with Ventura County to build a courthouse on the site of the new Juvenile Justice Complex. Under immediate past-Presiding Judge Bruce Clark, the court secured funding and began working with the county’s public works department to hire architects and contractors.

The 56,000-square-foot court facility includes two juvenile dependency courtrooms, two juvenile delinquency courtrooms and two general trial courtrooms. It will be staffed by three judges and 30 superior court employees who will be reassigned from existing facilities.

The new courthouse will include juvenile filing offices, mediation offices, a self-help center, and a special waiting room for children whose parents are conducting business with the court. In addition to juvenile matters, court staff can accept payments for traffic citations, installments and collection accounts.

The $16-million project is being funded from the existing penalty assessment on criminal and traffic fines deposited in the Courthouse Construction Fund. It’s one of only a few courthouse construction projects to be built statewide in recent years as court facilities transfer to state ownership under the Trial Court Facilities Act.

The first phase of the Juvenile Justice Complex, a 420-bed detention and commitment facility to replace the Clifton Tatum Center and Frank A. Colston Youth Center, opened in January 2004. It was funded, in part, by a $40.5-million grant obtained by the County of Ventura Probation Agency from the state Board of Corrections. The grant was one of the largest ever given for a juvenile facility.

The complex was officially named after Justice Steven Z. Perren by the Board of Supervisors in January 2001 in recognition of his strong efforts to bring the project to fruition. When completed, the 45-acre complex will bring courtrooms, classrooms, counseling services, administrative offices and the detention facility to one location. It will significantly change juvenile justice in Ventura County.