Chester H. Ferguson Law Center: home of the Hillsborough County Bar Association and the Hillsborough County Bar Foundation.

• Author: Johnson, Maria Simmons
• Position: Spotlight

The Chester H. Ferguson Law Center offers a state of the art facility to benefit the Hillsborough County legal community and provide a permanent home for the association and the foundation. This facility serves as a location not only to conduct business of the bar, but also to provide a venue to capture the collegial spirit of the bar. It serves as a forum to facilitate the expansion of the quality of jurisprudence, as well as a location where community programs providing legal assistance to the poor and disadvantaged, promoting social welfare, working toward the elimination of prejudice, and protecting human and civil rights can be organized, operated, and staffed.

The concept for the law center started over 30 years ago during the year that Joe Melendi was president of the Hillsborough County Bar Association. During the initial research, A. Dallas Albritton, Louis Putney, and Fraser Himes traveled to Missouri to meet with bar leaders and obtain information that would help in initiating a plan.

In 1987, HCBA President Judge James S. Moody, Jr., appointed a committee to again review the feasibility of a law center. Through the years, the dream was kept alive, and in 1995, HCBA President Richard Gilbert and a blue ribbon committee again focused on housing for the HCBA. In 1996, William Kalish became the first president of the Hillsborough County Bar Foundation, which would ultimately serve as the organizing vehicle to ensure the completion of the facility. During HCBA President Margaret D. Matthew's planning retreat in 1998, it was determined that the HCBA and the HCBF needed a permanent home.

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Between 2000 and 2001, the Hillsborough County Bar Association explored many possibilities and properties as an appropriate site for the facility. Among the most important criteria for the site included the need for a downtown location with convenient parking. In 2002, a leadership group chaired by John F. Rudy II and A. Dallas Albritton met with Mayor Dick Greco to discuss the possibility of the land that had housed the former Tampa Police Department. Also included in the...