County Seeks Construction Manager for Its Biggest Ever Development

Milwaukee County Safety Building. Photo by Graham Kilmer.

Milwaukee County is searching for a construction manager to oversee the development of a new criminal courthouse.

At $500 million, building a new criminal courthouse will be one of the largest projects in county government history.

The county is looking for a contractor willing to work as a construction manager at risk, or CMAR. The approach reduces the financial risk for the county, as the manager will oversee the project from design to completion and assume the burden of any cost overruns. The county is also using the approach to develop the new Marcia P. Coggs Human Services Center.

Planning and design began in 2024 and policymakers will try to keep the project alive with funding in the 2025 budget. Officials will eventually go after both federal and state funding to pay for the massive project.

The new courthouse would replace the dilapidated Safety Building, which was constructed in 1929 and does not conform to modern standards for a criminal courthouse. Currently, all felony criminal court cases are tried in the Safety Building and, despite its name, the building’s setup poses a threat to safety.

The building, 821 W. State St., forces defendants in custody, the public, jurors and court officials to all use the same halls to access courtrooms and this creates opportunities for violence, the county’s top judge has said.

“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 previously said.

The building facade is also crumbling and systems are failing. Damp conditions and flooding have damaged criminal evidence stored by the Clerk of Circuit Courts. It costs the county $500,000 a year to perform needed maintenance.

Along with the construction of a replacement for the Safety Building, the project will also include renovations to what officials call the historic county courthouse, the neoclassical building at 901 N. 9th St, which was built in 1931.

The county plans to sign a contract with a construction manager by early 2025. Under the current project timeline, construction wouldn’t begin until 2029.

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