CHICKASHA – The aged Grady County Courthouse is poised to receive a facelift.
The building is almost 90 years old and has “never had a major overhaul,” District 2 Grady County Commissioner Ruth Bingham said. “So, we have decided to renovate the courthouse.”
CMSWillowbrook of Chickasha is preparing an estimate of the work that will need to be done and the anticipated cost, she said. The estimate is expected to be delivered to the three county commissioners “between now and the end of November,” Bingham said.
The work will be performed in phases.
The first job will be renovation of the annex building west of the courthouse that houses the District Attorney’s staff; it previously housed a law firm.
While the annex is being remodeled, the DA’s staff will move into the renovated building at 205 W. Chickasha Ave. that’s owned by Grady County. When remodeled, the annex building will house the offices of the county clerk, county treasurer, and county assessor, Bingham said.
After renovation of the courthouse, the Board of County Commissioners will occupy the third floor, and the courthouse also will contain the DA’s office, the Court Clerk, and the courtrooms. “Little will be done” to Judge Kory Kirkland’s courtroom because it’s a “ceremonial courtroom,” Bingham said.
Kirkland confirmed for Southwest Ledger that his courtroom is one of only three “ceremonial” courtrooms in the state. “Some of this was passed to me from other judges, and some of it’s from an old Law Review article someone left for me.”
Ninety years ago this year, “Ours was the first WPA [Works Progress Administration] courthouse project west of the Mississippi,” Kirkland said. “A lot of people were excited about [President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s] New Deal, but nobody wanted to pass a bond for the materials.” However, the third time the project appeared on the ballot, “FDR’s team campaigned personally for the bond and it passed by a huge margin.”
The Grady County Courthouse “has what I have been told is one of three constitutional, ceremonial courtrooms,” Kirkland said. “They’re bigger and taller and prettier. I’m not sure where the other two courthouses are. It’s really historic, in that ours was a test case for other WPA courthouse projects around the state,” he said. “The artwork and construction materials and style were based on this one here.”
During their Oct. 14 meeting, the county commissioners also voted to consider another option related to the renovation project: buying or leasing the old Presbyterian Church on Sixth Street. “We’re getting some inspectors out there, electricians and air conditioning specialists, to look at that building,” Bingham told the Ledger. If it passes the inspection, that building perhaps could house the courtrooms and the court clerk’s staff during the courthouse renovation.
Construction on the courthouse probably won’t start until next March, and the job is expected to take two to three years to complete, Bingham said.
As for financing the work, “We have some cash we’ve put back and we get use tax revenue, so we have enough to get started,” she said. “And we are considering whether to establish a trust authority, which could borrow money, but we haven’t gone that far yet.