TWIN FALLS, Idaho — If you’ve visited downtown Twin Falls recently, you’ve likely noticed significant construction taking place across from City Park. This is the new Twin Falls County Courthouse, and crews have been working through the winter to make considerable progress.
"We wanted to have a building that we would be proud of as a community," stated Twin Falls County Commissioner Don Hall.
The county commissioners are closely monitoring the construction of the new courthouse, which Commissioner Hall describes as a long-overdue upgrade.
"We have not expanded our court system here in Twin Falls County since the 90s, and this is going to help with the growth of the community," he added. "It's going to help with safety, it's going to help with our community coming in for court, and for the judges and even the inmates."
One notable feature of the building is a basement that will include temporary transfer cells for housing inmates prior to court hearings. A secure central elevator system will transport them to the appropriate floor, ensuring they remain separated from the public.
"Keeping folks apart that need to be apart, and people together that need to be together; it just makes perfect sense," said Commissioner Hall.
The new courthouse will have eight courtrooms: four standard-sized, three medium, and one large courtroom designated for Supreme Court needs.
Cache Traveller is the project engineer overseeing the construction site.
"We are pretty much roughed-in and dry-walling on the first floor, and the second floor is about a week out to being completed with the rough-in stage, and exterior stuff is going on with brick and hopefully some GRFC panels coming from India here in a couple of weeks," said Traveller.
The project is estimated to cost between $30 to $35 million, with funding sourced from county project reserves and the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA).
"Frankly, without that money (ARPA), we wouldn't have been able to do the project now. So, there is no additional tax burden to our citizens, so that's really a positive," Commissioner Hall remarked.
As for the future implications of the new courthouse, Commissioner Hall stated, "We certainly have the iconic courthouse next to us, and we didn't want to try and compete with that in any way, because you can't, it's iconic. We wanted this facility to complement it, the looks of it and be something that we can be proud of that would be a hundred-year-old building, like the one that is next to us here, and serve our citizens for the future."
Construction on the new courthouse is expected to be completed this year, likely in August or September.
