Friday, April 26, 2024
At the corner of East Leon Street and South Fifth Street sits an expansive vacant lot. A set of stairs and a cracked driveway are all that remain of the former Foxworth-Galbraith Lumber store that used to sit on the property.
All that adorns the parcel now is overgrown grass and the occasional trash blowing through. But in the coming years it could house a new Coryell County government building.
In April 2019 Coryell County Commissioners began working with Southwest Architects Inc. to design a new jail and what was then called a new “Justice Center.”
Voters overwhelmingly rejected the new jail earlier this year, but the second building, now referred to as the “Coryell County new government building” is still in the planning phases.
Coryell County Judge Roger Miller proposed allocating $6 million of the $14.7 million in American Rescue Plan Act money the county received to partially fund the project. A total cost for the project has not been established and a final proposed budget for the ARPA funds or the county has not been submitted.
The court would have to approve the design, vote to move forward with the project and fund it before anything would be built.
At Monday’s Commissioners Court meeting Jeff Heffelfinger, president of Southwest Architects Inc., discussed the latest design for the building. The updates came after meeting with each department planning to use the new building to ensure it would fit their needs.
The plans showed the first floor housing a modern courtroom with a jury box and gallery for the Justice of the Peace as well as Commissioners Court. Rooms for election equipment, counting, and early voting were drawn in on the other side of the lobby. Offices for county administration officials including the commissioners, the county treasurer and the auditor were adjacent to the court.
The sub-basement included the Department of Public Safety, the game warden, the brand inspector, the Office of Emergency Management, and a new central dispatch.
In an effort to protect the courtrooms visitors would have to pass through a full security station to access the building.
Heffelfinger pointed out the space was designed with growth in mind. There are double the spaces for central dispatch, additional clerks for the Justice of the Peace and an office for a voter administration official, a job that doesn’t exist yet but likely will as the county grows.
As currently designed the building would take up nearly every inch of the parcel, although Heffelfinger said he would be tweaking the design over the next few weeks in an effort to shave some square footage.
There would be 39 parking spaces in a secure lot in the back of the building, and an additional 54 spots in a proposed lot across East Leon Street. A building would need to be demolished to accommodate the additional lot.
All four of the commissioners nodded their approval during Monday’s workshop, although no action was taken on the project. Heffelfinger is expected to bring final plans back over the next few weeks for approval from the court.
