City Council Approves New Jackson Court Building

The final step to start building the new Jackson city court building was cleared Tuesday. The Jackson city council voted 9 to zero to approve the contract for the project.

“The city council approved the low bid today which is roughly two point six million, roughly 13 hundred square feet,” said Mayor Jerry Gist.

The new building will consolidate both the city court and drug recovery court operations into one location. Putting the two groups together made the decision to go ahead and build the new location easier for the city.

“We calculated that by the time we paid the lease cost on the city court building and on our drug court, that would be almost enough to make the payments on the loan,” added Gist.

The new court building will solve many of the issues the current one deals with, most namely space.

“It’s a lot bigger building, gets it out of the core of downtown, plenty of parking adjacent to the building. We think it’ll be a benefit to the city courts,” said Sammy West, lead architect.

Mayor Gist says by the city court being moved out of their current location, it will open up some prime retail space.

“With the city court being downtown, that will free up space, hopefully, for retail, restaurants or something that will go downtown.”

And Jackson residents can expect that new city court building to be built at the corner of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and North Royal Street, to be finished by June or July of next year.

Construction is slated to begin on the new building by next month.