Leaders urged to build new courthouse adjacent to current building as downtown Stafford plans emerge

STAFFORD — At first, Stafford officials thought they couldn’t build a new $71 million courthouse on the same side of the street as the existing facility.

Officials knew they didn’t have enough room to build adequate parking spaces for the building and then began to look at 32 acres of county-owned property across Courthouse Road as a potential site for the new building.

But things have changed, and at a May 1 meeting of the county’s infrastructure committee, leaders were briefed on a plan to build the structure on the same side of the road as the current courthouse. This is possible now because of a plan to build a mixed-use center that would include parking for a variety of different uses, like retail, office, and Stafford County Government buildings.

Redeveloping the area surrounding the existing courthouse has been a priority of the current Board of Supervisors, which ultimately wants to turn the area in “downtown Stafford.” A new courthouse is a priority for the Board, too, as the project sits atop of the county’s capital improvement plans, besting other projects like new school construction.

If the new courthouse is built next to the existing one, the older building would be used as expansion office space for the county government, possibly by the Clerk of the Court office. Under the current plan, the Stafford County County Commonwealth Attorney’s office would remain in its home, located in the five-year-old Chichester Building next to the county’s George L. Gordon Government Center.

But there are rumblings that the office could be moved into the new courthouse.

“With these attorneys adjudicating these murder trails, for their safety, we need to have their offices nearby the courthouse,” said Falmouth District Supervisor Meg Bohmke.

Others said concerns about having the prosecutors in the Chichester Building are now only starting to arise now there’s talk of a new courthouse on the way.

“None of this came up when we built the Chichester Building,” said Garrisonville District Supervisor Mark Dudenhefer. “They were tickled to death to get the new building.”

County Administrator Thomas Foley urged committee members to limit the expansion of government buildings to the side of on which they currently sit. As part of the project to build a nearby diverging diamond interchange at Interstate 95, Courthouse Road east of I-95 will be rerouted to connect with Hospital Center Boulevard about a half mile south of its current intersection with Route 1.

The road’s relocation is expected to be the catalyst that spurs redevelopment around the courthouse, making the area more walkable. Recently, members of the Stafford County Board of Supervisors toured downtown development “Downtown Crown” in Montgomery County, Md., as well as Downtown Rockville, Md., and the Fairfax Court development in Fairfax County to get a sense of how a downtown Stafford might develop.