Stimulus Dollars Helped Make Courthouse Groundbreaking Happen

The new downtown federal courthouse is one of the largest construction projects to break ground in Austin -- made possible under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

"There are hundreds of millions of dollars that are coming right here to Central Texas," said U.S. Rep Lloyd Doggett, (D) Austin.

More than two years after the implosion of the Intel shell, The US General Services Administration broke ground on the $116 million federal courthouse Wednesday.

During Wednesday morning's groundbreaking, several judges and congressmen talked about the 252,000 square foot modern courthouse.

Congressman Lloyd Doggett said the courthouse was long overdue.

"This courthouse will replace one that I worked at as a young lawyer in the early 70's. It is overflowing, moldy, worn out -- it’s time to replace it with a place that can be a center of justice,” said Doggett.

Congressman Michael McCaul said the construction project is going to be good for the City of Austin.

"I disagree with what was in the stimulus, but this is the kind of stuff that's in the stimulus that is shovel-ready. It’s going to create a couple thousand jobs," said McCaul.

The new courthouse will be eight stories. Inside, there will be eight courtrooms, 10 chambers and office space for the district clerk, along with the US Pretrial, Probation and Marshal's offices.

Currently, many of those offices are divided into two separate buildings in downtown Austin. Neither is large enough to accommodate all of the federal courthouse offices. The new courthouse will bring them together.

"We're all excited about it because we'll be able to get to things quicker. We'll hopefully get more judges. As everyone knows, justice delayed is justice denied and we need this space in order to work efficiently and quickly through the dockets we have," said Lee Yeakel, U.S. District Judge of the Western District of Texas.

The courthouse will be built to LEED Silver certification of the US Green Buildings Council.

"It’s an exciting piece of what’s going to be our urban fabric," said Former Austin Mayor Will Wynn.

The City of Austin has been aggressive going after federal stimulus dollars. To date it has been awarded more than $50 million. The money will be used for weatherization, energy efficiency and homelessness prevention.

“We are putting infrastructure in the ground and leaving a long legacy of what we are doing from the work," said Greg Canally, Austin deputy chief financial officer.

White Construction, an Austin-based company, won the contract. The company expects to have this courthouse ready to go by the fall of 2012.