CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The Kanawha County Judicial Building will soon be getting renovations.
Last week, the Kanawha County Commission met and addressed the Judicial Building and brought Jody Driggs from Silling Architects to give an update on where plans stand.
Driggs announced that there would be a three-phase approach to renovating the building, with a goal end date of July 2026.
Driggs says the building would remain functional during renovation.
“The Judicial Building is going to remain active an operational through the course of the design and construction,” Driggs said.
Driggs says the first phase of the project will be changes to the first and fifth floors.
“The first phase of the project is the addition of new construction along Court Street and Virginia Street, as well as renovation of about half of the first floor of the magistrate hearing rooms and offices, as well as renovation of the fifth-floor current visiting judges’ courtroom to become your permanent new circuit judge’s courtroom and their chambers as well,” Driggs said.”
The first phase is expected to be completed around October 2025.
According to Driggs, the second phase of the project is more renovation focused.
“The second phase includes the small fitting out of the addition between the building and the parking garage,” Driggs said. “This is the balance of the magistrate hearing rooms, the magistrate offices and their assistant’s offices.”
Driggs says this phase is not as hefty as the first.
“It’s not a big piece of new construction, it’s renovation,” Driggs said. “We see that as a seven-month window.”
Finally, there is a phase three of the project, but it will be a much simpler process to finish off the changes.
“The last piece is renovation of the day court space,” Driggs said. “The day court needs to remain operational both within phases one and two, so when we get to the very end, there’s about a six-week final touch-up of getting the end of the day court space completed. This takes us out into July of 2026 to finish these three unique projects that have to happen linearly and sequentially.”
Drawings of the Judicial Building project will be advertised for the public bidding process in the third week of August. Bids for the project are set to be due in mid-September, and Driggs expects the construction company that gets the award will start work in October.
Driggs says despite the aggressive schedule, it’s a do-able process.
“We believe it is (reasonable),” Driggs said. “It’s, in fact, appropriately aggressive. What we don’t want to do is condense these timeframes such that contractors perceive excessive risk. The building will be renovated and added onto to, much of it, in the evening hours, so there’s not a lot of time to work two and three shifts on this project, so we need to give them a reasonable time to finish the project. We think this is do-able.”