Option for New Minnesota Courthouse Considered

By CN Staff

REDWOOD COUNTY, Minn.—A new option was presented in January for the consideration of a new courthouse in Redwood County, Minn. According to an article in the Redwood Falls Gazette, after a first glance, county commissioners expressed that they felt it was a good solution.

Following a presentation by John McNamara of Wold Architects, the commissioners asked the firm to take the preliminary drawings and add further details to it.

This recent plan is based on direction that the board gave Wold Architects to consider creating a two-story structure on the land north of where the current courthouse sits at 250 Jefferson Street.

In his presentation, McNamara offered to address the security challenges of bringing prisoners from the law enforcement center to the courthouse. The solution would be to build a tunnel under the ground from one building to the other.

This addition of an underground tunnel—as well as the change of plans to have a two-story building—will come with increased costs to include the installation of elevators. While merely a preliminary estimate, McNamara told county commissioners that the tunnel may increase the cost of the project by $1 million.

“We are still in the very early stages of this,” said McNamara. “There are a lot of details that still need to be worked out.”

He also said that it appears that this project may require additional digging below the new courthouse for the footings, which would then allow for more of the mechanical items to be housed below the building rather than an initial plan to place it on the roof.

With the added work, the preliminary estimate is $12.1 million, McNamara said in a statement.