One of downtown Savannah’s largest eyesores will soon meet with the wrecking ball to make way for a more elegant replacement.
The Savannah Historic District Board of Review granted Chatham County permission Wednesday to demolish the former jail facility located next to the county courthouse on Montgomery Street. The county plans to construct a modern stone-and-glass building on the site to house Superior and State court operations.
Several judges, including Superior Court Judge Michael Karpf and State Court Judge Gregory Sapp, attended the meeting.
Funds for the replacement building won’t be available until 2015 and are tied to the next Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax referendum. The money to raze the old jail and begin prep work for the new facility is on hand, however, and a county spokesman expressed optimism the project would “go forward within the next year.”
The jail has stood on the corner of Oglethorpe Avenueand Montgomery Street since 1978. The county opened a larger facility, the Chatham County Detention Center near Chatham Parkway, in 1988 and gradually relocated many of the inmates there. The existing courthouse located next door to the old jail includes holding cells in its basement to accommodate inmates scheduled for court appearances, making the building unnecessary.
As for the new courthouse planned for the site, the building will stand four stories high, measure 164,959 square feet and include a large central atrium. The county unveiled the plans and renderings for the courthouse during the meeting and received the first of two required approvals for the structure.
Historic Review Board members hailed the project’s architects, Dewberry, out of Fairfax, Va., and local partner Barnard Architects, for their vision, particularly in comparison to the drab concrete jail structure.
A Dewberry representative acknowledged plans to eventually “re-skin” the exterior façade of the existing courthouse to match the stone-and-glass look of the new structure.