|
Only have a minute? Listen instead
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
There’s new progress at the Hidalgo County Courthouse, which was slated to open its doors in 2021, but has seen delay after delay push that date into uncertainty for the past three years.
However, opening day may soon be on the horizon, according to reports from county officials this week.
“The meeting between the county and the city of Edinburg will be taking place this afternoon,” Hidalgo County Judge Richard F. Cortez said during a meeting of the Hidalgo County Board of Judges held via Zoom on Thursday morning.
The county judge was referring to a meeting county officials hoped to have with the city of Edinburg, where the courthouse sits, regarding obtaining a certificate of occupancy.
Certifying that the courthouse has met that threshold would mark the first major development toward a move-in date in years.
“Fantastic! … That’s the first time we’ve gotten a report that I’m confident is moving everything forward,” 370th state District Judge Noe Gonzalez, chief administrative judge of the board of judges, said in response.
“I know that everyone is frustrated, including the county judge’s office, with what’s been happening. We need to use the facility. The county’s already paying for it, so we need to start using it,” Gonzalez added.
After the seven story building obtains a certificate of occupancy, then officials can schedule a time for the Texas Commission on Jail Standards to conduct an inspection of its own — this time, of the new courthouse’s inmate holding areas.
“Once that occurs, then we will have the ‘OK’ to move in and use the facilities, my understanding is,” Gonzalez said.
Hidalgo County Administrator Valde Guerra confirmed.
“Yes, sir, judge. That is correct. … We are on track, and as an add-on, we have commenced, simultaneously, Phase II of the courthouse project, which is undertaking of the (demolition) of the old courthouse,” Guerra said.
On Tuesday, the Hidalgo County Commissioners Court approved the hiring of La Feria-based construction firm, Noble Texas Builders, to serve as the construction manager at risk, or CMAR, for the demolition of the current courthouse.
It remains unclear how much the demolition will cost or when it will begin, as the commissioners held no public discussion before voting unanimously to approve hiring Noble. Nor was any additional information included as part of Tuesday’s agenda packet.
However, during a board of judges meeting held in August, Cortez hinted at what the timeline could look like for transferring operations out of the existing courthouse and into the newer one.
“I believe that we’re not months away, but we’re weeks away from getting these issues resolved,” Cortez said then.
The new courthouse was slated to open more than three years ago, in February 2021, according to estimates provided to the county by Morganti Texas Inc., the Houston-based firm serving as CMAR on the build.
But Morganti is just one of several construction and engineering firms that the county has continued to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for work and repairs that have plagued the structure long since its construction seemed, externally, to be complete.
Documents obtained by The Monitor via several Texas Public Information Act requests hint at a prolonged dispute the county has had with the courthouse’s builders.
However, public officials have been reticent to discuss the particulars of the dispute, and records requests seeking further details have been met with objections to the Texas Attorney General’s Office.
During that August meeting of the board of judges, however, Cortez’s comments gave new insight into the dispute.
“You know, we continue to battle our contractor. They continue to say that we over designed that portion of the courthouse and we continue to tell them that we don’t care if we over designed it, that’s what they agreed to build — what was designed, and they haven’t done that,” Cortez said.
“But we’ll overcome that. They have a new president, they have a new CEO. We met with them. We had a very good discussion,” Cortez said.
It’s unclear which of the several firms involved with the courthouse’s construction the county judge was referring to.
Public reports show that Morganti named a new CEO and president in 2020, while another firm associated with the project, Jacobs Project Management, named a new CEO in January 2023.
As for the architecture firm that designed the courthouse, HDR, it named a new CEO at the beginning of this year.
Meanwhile, repairs related to issues uncovered during a third-party inspection of the structure last spring continue.
County records show that officials have held numerous meetings with high-level officials at HDR over the course of the summer. Documents show those meetings have involved “dispute support” and the “WJE deficiency list” — the issues discovered by that third-party firm.
But Judge Gonzalez said he doesn’t expect those issues to affect continued forward progress.
“There are some repairs being made to the envelope, which is the exterior of the building. But, when they’re talking about stucco, it’s really a small percentage of the building,” Gonzalez said.
“What they’re talking about is mostly on the south side, which is the mechanical area and the air intake areas, and those are being redone, but that shouldn’t stop us from getting a certificate of occupancy,” he added a moment later.
