JACKSONVILLE, N.C. -- Construction is already underway for the new Onslow County Court House in Jacksonville
“We're excited about the project,” said Lisa Brown, Clerk of Superior Court in Onslow County. “It's most importantly going to give us additional court room space, which is long overdue.”
Court officials say it will also be more user friendly for the public.
"It's going to house all of the court personnel into one building where now we have the District Attorney located in one building, we have the Clerk’s office located in another building, we have our district court judges located in another, it's going to bring all those agencies together,” said Brown
The $16.4 million project will be over 58,000 square feet with four floors.
It's being built behind the Summersill Court Building and will have a total of nine courtrooms, giving court personnel the opportunity to get through cases quicker.
“The additional court rooms will allow us to hold additional courts to hopefully dispose of the huge backlog that we have in the cases,” said Brown.
The county clerk says the additional space is desperately needed.
“We've maxed out our office space for the personnel that's needed to process the caseload that we currently have,” said Brown. “It's also maxed out our storage space for the files we're required to keep.”
But the two year construction process will cause a temporary inconvenience for court personnel and the public.
“It's going to cause us to have to occasionally hold court off site into the other buildings creating a need for my staff to be mobile,” said Brown
It will also create an even bigger burden on parking in the area but the court encourages everyone to think about the long term benefits of the project.
"It's going to be a lot of inconvenience but I just pray that everybody will remember the benefits that were going to reap from it and that'll make it all worth it,” said Brown.
Onslow County will be holding a ground breaking ceremony for the new courthouse at 2 p.m. on Thursday.