Van Zandt Co. leaders plan to move out of old courthouse

EDOM – Van Zandt County leaders held a townhall to inform residents of their future plans to move out of the current courthouse building. On Monday night, according to our news partner KETK, dozens of residents were able to hear two plans for the county. The first proposed project is to completely move their courthouse operations to a building downtown. The second proposed project is to build a brand-new jail and Sheriff’s office. The county’s current courthouse was built in 1937 and is need of major renovations.

County Commissioner Brandon Barton said documents and the amount of people living in Van Zandt County has outgrown the 88-year-old building.

“From 2010 to 2020, the county grew at 25% and they’re projecting that for the future also,” said Van Zandt Co. Precinct 4 county commissioner, Brandon Barton said.

“We’ve had water problems, we’ve had leak problems, the walls in the courthouse are crumbling. We’ve run out of space, we have no more room,” Barton said.

Instead of building a new courthouse from scratch, Barton said purchasing the Paul Michael Company furniture store for $4.2 million is a better alternative.

“We found a 100,000 square-foot building there in downtown Canton and we think it’d be a good location and only 73,000 feet would be used at first, so we’ll have 27,000 feet for future expansion,” Barton said.

The building will be renovated to be the new courthouse. It will cost an additional $19 million to restructure the furniture store into a functioning courthouse.

“It’s estimated that it’ll cost about $19 million to get it like a courthouse. The construction inside as far as security, offices, building, so you combine that it’ll be $24 million. I don’t know where else you can find that, you can’t build one. If you bought that in today’s world you’ll be talking about $100 million,” Barton said.

The second project is to build a new county jail and sheriff’s office for a combined total of $145 million.

The 124,814-square-foot jail is estimated to cost $125 million and the sheriff’s office is estimated at $20 million.

Barton said their current jail should have 198 beds, but they only have 140 beds total. The new proposed jail would be budgeted for 350 beds.

“We have 140-bed jail. This current bond project is for 350 beds, which would increase the number of inmates that we can take in and also it would decrease the outsourcing that we have we currently have to do with other inmates,” Van Zandt Co. Sheriff Kevin Bridger said.

Bridger said inmates would be transferred to other agencies like the Henderson County and Kaufman.

“This will increase the number of inmates that we can take in and also it would decrease the outsourcing that we have we currently have to do with other inmates,” Bridger said.

He added the jail is not properly maintained. The jail was built in the 1990’s and the roof leaks, the foundation shifts and there are a lot of structural issues with the jail itself.

Barton said the jail isn’t built for the type of prisoners they have now. He said now they have a lot of mental patients and more female inmates.

“In today’s world, when that was built, it was a different type of prisoner back there and we’re having problems with mental patients now. A lot of females, which we didn’t have that problem in the nineties,” Barton said.

The 29,144-square-foot sheriff’s office would give all of their divisions adequate space for deputies.

“We just converted some space, essentially an oversized closet to an office as well, just to make more space available,” Bridger said.

The courthouse is under a certificate of obligation which means it would not require voter approval. The citizens can vote if 5% of the public files a petition to do so.

The jail and sheriff’s office project will be a bond election.