New Courthouse Project Opens Door For Energy Efficiency

Milwaukee County Safety Building. Photo by Graham Kilmer.

Milwaukee County’s massive criminal courthouse project will also provide officials an opportunity to decarbonize the entire courthouse complex.

Planning began this year on a replacement for the Safety Building, 821 W. State St., which is in poor condition and was not originally designed for criminal court operations. It’s estimated it will cost approximately $488 million to develop a new criminal courthouse, making it the biggest development in county government history.

It has taken nearly a decade to move the courthouse project forward. County Executive David Crowley added funding to the 2024 budget to begin the significant planning process required for the project. The county was flush with the remnants of federal stimulus funding and new sales tax revenue at the time. But policymakers are already struggling to find enough funding to keep the planning going into next year.

The epic undertaking will allow county officials to overhaul the energy systems for the entire courthouse complex, which includes the Milwaukee County Jail and the historic Milwaukee County Courthouse. The courthouse was built in 1932 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The county’s Department of Administrative Services (DAS) is looking for consultants to help the county plan for new energy systems, and optimize existing ones, to bring the complex of buildings in line with the county’s carbon emissions policy.

The county has committed to achieving carbon neutrality or net-zero emissions by 2050, relative to 2005, which is the standard set by the Paris Climate Agreement. Since the government began tracking emissions and developing a plan to reduce them, officials found the county already on track to meet its emission goals. But this was largely due to the county moving out of more than 3 million square feet in real estate over the past decade or so.

The courthouse complex accounts for approximately 13% of all county emissions, according to the DAS. Along with the circuit court system, the complex also houses the offices of the county executive, Board of Supervisors, County Clerk, Treasurer and Register of Deeds.

By piggybacking on the planning effort for the new criminal courthouse, officials are seeking a plan “to drive energy use in existing facilities down as much as practicable in the near term, and then develop a roadmap for application of renewables and full decarbonization by 2050,” according to documents the DAS released to prospective consultants.