State certifies Hidalgo County’s new courthouse’s holding facilities

Hidalgo County’s victory lap is rounding another base as local leaders giddy about opening its long-awaited and long-delayed new courthouse have something else to celebrate: the state’s blessing.

County officials announced Friday that the Texas Commission on Jail Standards certified that the new courthouse’s holding facilities met state standards, a welcomed milestone for a project that has at times given the county both headaches and hope.

“This is a significant step forward in the completion of one of the largest construction projects in Hidalgo County history,” Hidalgo County Judge Richard F. Cortez said in a news release Friday. “With last week’s Certificate of Occupancy that was provided by the City of Edinburg, the transition from the old courthouse to the new will now begin in earnest.”

The $190 million, seven-story courthouse is expected to house the county’s district courts and office (with the exception of the juvenile justice court), the 13th Court of Appeals, the county courts-at-law, the masters courts, and limited space for the district attorney’s office (sans the ADAs), the county sheriff’s office and county bar association.

Each floor save for the second will also house at least 12 holding cells.

But there’s still much work to be done as the second phase of construction continues.

“The move management process, which involves millions of legal documents and hundreds of courthouse employees from County facilities including the old county courthouse, is expected to take from 60 to 90 days,” the county said of the upcoming transition from its current, 70-year-old courthouse to its new digs.

Cortez previously told The Monitor that March 2025 would be the worst-case scenario move-in date.

That occasion will come after years of delays which began with Houston-based firm Morganti Inc., which was tasked with constructing the courthouse, missing its February 2021 target date of completion.

Occurring since has been a whirlwind of uncertainty — from the county anticipating litigation against Morganti, to the firm at one point stopping work on the project for months, to the county hiring Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates to inspect the construction and finding various defects.

Things have looked much rosier recently as the county obtained its certificate of occupancy from Edinburg city inspectors earlier this month and held a media tour of the new courthouse on Friday, Dec. 6 to mark the occasion.

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