Key County Committee Approves Courthouse Project

Conceptual rendering of new courthouse and historic courthouse with new entrance on MacArthur Square.

A proposal for a new criminal courthouse in Milwaukee County, with a price tag of nearly $900 million, received its first official approval Wednesday.

The county’s ad hoc Capital Improvements Committee independently vets the government’s annual list of government infrastructure projects and provides a recommendation to the county executive ahead of budget deliberations. The committee recommended approval of the massive public works project, which will replace the nearly 96-year-old Safety Building, at 821 W. State St.

The Safety Building, which handles the county’s felony criminal cases, is in poor condition and was not originally designed for use as a courthouse. Confined courtrooms and a single set of shared hallways leave defendants, victims, attorneys, jurors and the public packed together and create opportunities for outbursts of violence and mistrials during the often tense criminal cases working through the Milwaukee County Circuit Court system.

“This is a generational investment, looking to build a building for 100 more years, and a building that is flexible and executes the justice system effectively and efficiently,” Jeremy Lucas, acting deputy chief of staff told the ad hoc committee Wednesday.

County officials have been discussing how to repair or replace the Safety Building for more than a decade. Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley‘s administration began planning a replacement in 2024. In 2025, the administration secured $20 million in annual state funding for the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO) highway patrol, which freed up money to provide cash for the courthouse project. The plan is to continue using that offset cash to pay down the substantial debt that will be issued to build the new courthouse.

In total, it’s estimated the new building will cost approximately $897 million. Inflation has raised the price tag roughly 50% over the past decade, Aaron Hertzberg, Department of Administrative Services director, previously said. The county has already budgeted $38.6 million since 2024 and will need to borrow $857 million, according to the administration.

The county would borrow the money in chunks between 2027 and 2029, Lucas said. In total, the interest on the debt is estimated to hit approximately $621 million, bringing the project’s total cost, with principal and interest, to approximately $1.5 billion.

The first debt issuance in 2027 would be approximately $125 million, which is well over the county’s self-imposed annual borrowing limit. It’s also more than the county typically spends on its entire annual infrastructure budget in a given year. In 2026, the county budgeted about $108 million for infrastructure projects across the entire government.

Despite this, the project remains within the county’s state-imposed debt limit, and state law allows the county to raise property taxes to pay back public debt. Property tax hikes specifically for the courthouse would begin in 2028, with an estimated $20 impact on $250,000 of assessed value. The figure steadily increases until reaching a maximum of $137 in 2030, holding there until 2047, then steadily coming back down each year.

However, the property tax impact does not factor in the cash freed up by the state highway patrol funding. Those funds would help the county pay off approximately $411 million of the project cost over the life of the debt.

The administration is bringing the project to the county board for authorization in September. By the end of the month, supervisors will also receive Crowley’s recommended budget for 2027, which will need to close a $50.8 million budget gap.

Crowley needs two-thirds of the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors to support the courthouse project and the accompanying property tax increase. At the same time, supervisors will be looking at a budget with cuts to core public services and a 25% cut to the Milwaukee County Transit System as the county’s longstanding structural deficit, driven by a disastrously pricey pension system and frozen state funding, eats away at the government’s bottom line.

Safety Building

Existing members must be signed in to see the interactive map. Sign in.