Mike Smith
El Rito Media
msmith@currentargus.com

Three options for the future of the Eddy County Courthouse were discussed by county commissioners at their meeting on Tuesday (Oct. 15).

Jason Burns, the county’s public works director, presented two options based on studies conducted over a four-month period, and a third option emerged during the meeting that will be presented to the public at a town hall meeting Oct. 23. A time and place for the meeting have not been determined.

The options arising from the study, Burns said, would offer the choice of adding on to the current courthouse or building a new facility near the Eddy County Sheriff’s Office on Corrales Road where a new administration complex and a new detention center are under construction.

Burns said the third option would involve renovating the existing courthouse with security improvements, remodeling the exterior and completing needed maintenance projects.

“The cost estimate to keep it downtown was $139 million and that’s to do the add on and to renovate the existing (structure) and make that the facility that it needs to be,” Burns said.

He said building a new facility south of Carlsbad would cost $149 million.

Burns said Eddy County’s cost for a new building could be reduced if the county magistrate and Carlsbad municipal courts would “agree and partner with us to become part of the judicial center out here (the Corrales location). They would then pay their portion of the projects which would respectively be $23 million for magistrate and $21 million for municipal court.”

He said if both courts agree, Eddy County’s overall cost for the new facility would be $105 million.

Eddy County Commission vice chair Sarah Cordova said the commissioners tasked Burns and other county staffers to study what a potential move would mean for business owners and those who work at or near the current courthouse downtown.

“First off, it was the information we had asked for. Looking towards what could potentially be housed in the courthouse (if court operations move). I felt very pleased with what was presented,” she said. “It’s very important to me as well as the other commissioners that the public has an opportunity to voice their opinions, concerns, and ideas. We want people coming forward either way if they’re for it or against it.”

According to a historical timeline presented by Burns, the courthouse at 102 N. Canal St. in Carlsbad was built in 1892 but the original structure was mostly demolished and rebuilt in the late 1930s. Additional renovations have been completed in the decades since that reconstruction.

Mike Smith can be reached at 575-308-8734 or email at msmith@currentargus.com.