Grafton County considers $47.3 million new courthouse

An artist’s rendering of the proposed Grafton County courthouse building. (Courtesy of Lavallee Brensinger Architects)

The public got a first glimpse of what a new Grafton County courthouse in North Haverhill would look like last month when the architectural firm submitted its design to county commissioners, along with the price tag: $47.3 million.

But a new courthouse is a way from becoming reality as skeptics question its necessity, saying it will only add to the tax burden of county residents. A proposal has yet to be presented to the county legislative delegation, which has the ultimate say in deciding whether to go through with the project.

A new courthouse at the county complex in North Haverhill to replace the current building which opened in 1972 has been under discussion by successive commissions dating back to before the pandemic. Proponents of replacing the more than half-century-old structure cite a variety of factors, such as the absence of basic fixtures like a sprinkler system and lack of insulation.

“The building is dying a death of a thousand slices,” said Jim Oakes, superintendent of the maintenance department at the county complex. “Nothing is hardbroke, but we’ve Band-Aided things for years and years to keep them going. The electrical system is 55 years old. It was designed for 30 years. You can’t even get parts for it on eBay any longer.”

Prepared by Lavallee Brensinger Architects, a Manchester firm, the 38-page “final report presentation” of the new courthouse building was submitted to the three-member County Commission on June 24. It was the first major update on the proposed project since a 108-page engineering and assessment study in 2021 concluded it would be more cost efficient to build a new courthouse than to bring the current structure up to code and renovate for future capacity.

“I’d been telling the commissioners that, although the building’s running and I don’t have any crisis right now, there’s a lot of things going wrong, a mammoth cost coming down the road and we’ve got to do something about it,” Oakes said.

The final report says it was prepared with input from each of the nine departments slated to occupy the new courthouse building, encompassing the Grafton County Sheriff’s Office, Dispatch and Communications, Corrections Department’s Probation and Parole office, the county Bar Association, Grafton County Attorney’s Office, Register of Deeds, maintenance department, a state DMV office, and Judicial Branch offices for judges and clerks staff.

The “conceptual design” shows a 64,668-square-foot structure — 20,000-square feet more than present — with three courtrooms and judges’ chambers on the second floor. The county prosecutor’s office and sheriff’s department would be on the first floor. (Currently, courtrooms are on the first floor, sheriffs are in the basement and the state attorney is on the second floor.)

Because courthouse business would need to continue during construction, the new courthouse is envisioned to be built in the area of the existing parking lot. Once the new courthouse is occupied, the old courthouse would be demolished.

Now that the final report is public, the next step is for the three-member Grafton County Commission to vote on whether or not to approve the plan. If commissioners approve, the proposal goes to the 26-member Grafton County legislative delegation, which has final say on the county’s spending plan.

Inflation has driven up both building and borrowing costs and look to go even higher, noted State Rep. George Sykes, chairman of the county delegation who also is a Lebanon city councilor.

“Unfortunately, the timing is not good in terms of the cost of money and the cost of projects because everything is more expensive right now, Sykes said. “But the problem is the longer we wait, the more expensive it gets.”

(The existing courthouse cost $2 million when it was built in 1971, according to a Valley News story at the time.)

Issues with the existing courthouse range from lack of insulation in the walls which make it cold in the winter, and large panes of windows that make it too hot in the summer. The poor insulation also drives up the cost of heating in winter. An old courtroom audio system makes it difficult to hear court proceedings from the public gallery.

The existing courthouse was built before sprinkler systems were mandated by building codes. The cost of ripping out the ceiling, and the asbestos abatement that would go along with it, was one of the reasons the 2021 engineering study determined it would be more cost effective to build an entire new courthouse than renovate the current one, Oakes said.

Renovating the existing courthouse also would be difficult due to the incurred expense of finding temporary space to move courthouse operations — most notably jury trials — and staff during the construction period of a year or longer, along with the attending security apparatus that would be required, he added.

As for the impact on taxpayers, Martha MacLeod, who is serving her second term as commissioner, said the bond that went toward the construction of the new jail is a “few years” from being paid off and will largely be completed by the time a new courthouse project gets underway. “There’s a little overlap but not too many years,” MacLeod said. She also noted that the county receives rental income from the state to lease the state attorney, judiciary and DMV offices at the courthouse, which help offset the county’s costs to operate the building.