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The government center will soon be getting another courtroom.

When the Troup County Government Center was designed, plans included nine courtrooms in mind. The designs included three floors with three courtrooms on each floor. When the government center was built, only two on each floor were completed with one of the potential courtrooms framed up but just a shell.

For 20 years, six courtrooms have been sufficient but demand is growing so the courts are asking to finish out another courtroom, specifically the third courtroom on the third floor.

Plans for the new courtroom began in March of last year. Staff requested approval to move forward with the project and put it out to bid during the Troup County Board of Commissioners meeting on Tuesday.

Judge Markette Baker said that when the government center was built people thought the courts were headed to smaller court sessions and smaller, more intimate spaces were needed.

“Almost the opposite has happened,” Baker said. “Every space is filled, everything, every space is filled that we have, and if we had a little bit more, we’d probably use it.”

Baker explained that due to increased court cases scheduling has become more difficult and the courtrooms are often spilling out into the hallways as people wait to get their cases heard.

“Our goal is to have people get into court and have their matters handled,” Baker said. “People have certain constitutional rights … when you come into court, we are talking about fundamental constitutional rights.”

“One of the tenants that we have, that we abide by, is open court. Court is open to anyone and everyone that wants to come in. But right now, it’s open to anyone and everyone, as long as you arrive first and get a seat. We have to be careful and cognizant of that,” Baker said. “Nobody comes to court to say, ‘Let’s have a good time and go see what’s going on.’ That’s not what it is. It is important and it is serious.”

Baker said the design for the new courtroom is for it to be a non-jury courtroom, which will allow for more seating.

“Most courtrooms have jury boxes, and you see people come in, and there we have 14 seats, where people take a seat, it takes up a lot of space,” Baker said. “The more people we can seat, the more we can manage as we go through. It helps out with efficiency and it helps out scheduling issues.”

Assistant County Manager Jay Anderson said they will bid out finishing the courtroom. The bids would come in on March 27, to be presented during the first commissioners meeting in April.

“We are estimating that the bids will come in somewhere between $750,000 and a million. Courtrooms are not cheap construction, a lot of woodwork and a lot of paneling,” Anderson said. “Finishes in a house, that’s the most expensive thing, and that’s basically what we’re doing here, finishing it out. As you can imagine, every single piece of material, lumber, labor and equipment, has to be brought into the basement, brought up an elevator and down the hall. So it’s going to it’s going to be a little pricey per square foot, just for the the sheer operation and the dynamics of having to bring everything into the Government Center, bringing up an elevator. It’s just not like backing your pickup truck up to your front door and doing construction.”

The commissioners unanimously approved bidding out the project.