County Aims To Build New Courthouse By 2032

Milwaukee County could have a new criminal courthouse by 2032.

A decade after county officials agreed it needed replacement, planning has begun in earnest for a new criminal courthouse. Significant funds were budgeted for design in 2024, and officials are proceeding under the assumption construction will begin by 2029.

Criminal court operations are currently run out of the Safety Building, 821 W. State St. The building is old, in significant need of repair, slows down the criminal justice system and poses security risks for the public and court staff, according to county officials.

The courthouse project would maintain and renovate what officials call the historic county courthouse, the monumental neoclassical structure at 901 N. 9th St, which was built in 1931.

The project is one of the largest in county history, carrying a price tag that might reach $500 million by the time it finishes. Funding has, historically, proven challenging for the county, which has an estimated $1 billion in deferred maintenance and infrastructure needs. Inflation has bedeviled an already complicated project, escalating cost estimates from approximately $327 million in 2019 to more than $400 million.

“So when we talk about the cost of this project, we should be talking in terms of a range of costs,” Stuart Carron, director of facilities management told county supervisors Monday. “Somewhere between 400 and 500 million.”

Criminal court cases currently play out in courtrooms in the Safety Building, which was built in 1929. It does not meet the modern standards for a criminal courthouse and jeopardizes safety and the proper functioning of the court system. To perform all needed maintenance and bring the building into compliance with modern standards and codes, the county would need to spend an estimated $333.5 million, according to a recent report. But it still wouldn’t be enough, as some areas of the building are considered “functionally obsolete” and no amount of retrofitting will make them usable for a modern court operation, said Aaron Hertzberg, Director of the county’s Department of Administrative Services (DAS), which is overseeing the project.

The building facade is crumbling and the public and electrical systems are outdated and regularly failing. Damp conditions and flooding have damaged criminal evidence stored by the Clerk of Circuit Courts. The county sets aside $500,000 every year for emergency maintenance at the building, according to the report, which was presented to the county board’s Committee on Community, Environment and Economic Development.

The building poses safety concerns for the court system, with defendants, jurors, families, witnesses and court staff all using the same hallways to access the courtrooms, raising the potential for conflict. This slows down the wheels of justice for the state’s largest judicial district, as court officers and bailiffs try to maintain order and security. The building does not comply with rules issued by the state Supreme Court for court facilities.

“We put our jurors, we put the public, we put our staff at risk because of the way things are built now and not compliant with the Supreme Court rules,” Chief Judge Carl Ashley told the committee.

In 2024, $9.45 million was budgeted to begin designing the new courthouse. The county is already finding it challenging to sustain funding for just this phase of the project, with design costs likely eating up much of the county’s cash budget for infrastructure projects next year. State and federal funding will be critical to moving the project to construction. Federal earmarks and the next state budget cycle are critical to the planning effort right now, Carron said.

Some of the design work currently underway involves where exactly to build the new courthouse. The initial idea was to move court operations to a temporary facility, tear down the safety building and construct a new facility in its place. Criminal court operations would be displaced for more than two years under that scenario. The county has brought on design consultants to consider other options and test whether that plan makes sense.

“But the short answer is, we’re looking at all options,” Hertzberg said.

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Related Legislation: Information report on court planning