By Scott Turner
Madison County will build a new courthouse, Commission Chairman Dale Strong said at his State of the County Address at the Von Braun Center on Tuesday.
Strong said the Commission will go through the same process as it did during the construction of its Service Center, which opened last year at Memorial Parkway and Oakwood Avenue.
“For years, the Madison County Courthouse would not win a lot of beauty contests,” Strong said of the courthouse, which sits at the center of the Huntsville city square. “You might not know how outdated the building has become. Maintenance and energy costs continue to rise every year.”
He said the building – built in 1964 – does not have hot water. Strong said the Commission looked at renovating the building, but said the costs of renovating the building would be more than $60 million, which he said did not make “good business sense.”
Strong said earlier this year that the Commission used Chapman Sisson Architects to look at a possible renovation. It is the same firm that designed the Service Center.
“We’ve needed a lot of additional courtroom space,” Strong said. “We’ve added another judge that we’re having to build a temporary courtroom for right now. Our hope is that we can build something that will not only take care of what we need today, but also the days ahead.”