After years of on drawing board, construction begins on new Sacramento courthouse
Construction crews will soon begin work on the long-anticipated $493 million Sacramento County Courthouse near the city’s Railyards district, Sacramento Superior Court officials announced Friday.
“We finally see light at the end of the tunnel,” presiding Sacramento Superior Court Judge Russell Hom said in the prepared statement. “Replacing the antiquated downtown courthouse with a new state of the art court facility will not only bring renewed prosperity to the Sacramento region but, more importantly, meet the much needed judicial needs of our growing community for years to come.”
Officials announced crews officially broke ground on the multimillion dollar project Friday. Courthouse builders Clark Construction Group is leading the project.
The new 17-floor, 53-courtroom courthouse on the block bordering H and G streets and 5th and 6th streets will be erected directly behind the federal Robert Matsui United States Courthouse on I Street and will replace the Gordon Schaber Courthouse at 720 9th St.
The new courthouse is slated to open December 2023.
The new courthouse will consolidate operations under one roof that had been spread across the main Schaber courthouse, Sacramento Main Jail and the Hall of Justice on 6th Street, officials said, with larger courtrooms and jury assembly rooms included in the design.
Sacramento court and city leaders have sought for years to build a new courthouse to replace the 1960s-era Schaber courthouse long deemed to be unsafe, cramped and obsolete.
The state’s Judicial Council agreed, at one point listing the downtown Sacramento courthouse among sites with an “immediate need” to be replaced.
The Judicial Council of California approved plans in February 2016 for the new 538,000-square-foot county courthouse, but a funding crisis later that summer put new courthouse construction statewide on hold.
Funding was later approved in 2018, with construction scheduled to begin in Fall 2019, but delays pushed the project’s start into the final months of 2020.
Retired Superior Court Judge and now-court Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Connelly, who championed the courthouse effort for years, called the project “a half-billion dollar dream come true,” in a statement, adding “the mirage in the distance for years has become a reality.”
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