Council hears proposal for new municipal court building

Springfield’s current municipal court building, built in 1965, was once a cafeteria, and that’s evident when looking at one of its breaker panels, still marked to indicate the dishwasher and salad bar.

It’s a building that was never intended to be used as a municipal court facility, according to Stephanie Shadwick, principal and architect of nForm Architecture LLC.

That 9,800-square-foot structure could expand more than fourfold if city leaders opt for a three-story, 44,500-square-foot design proposed by nForm Architecture in a Springfield City Council luncheon meeting yesterday.

The proposed building – with an estimated cost of $42 million – would be sited on city-owned property fronting Chestnut Expressway, just west of Historic City Hall between Boonville and Campbell avenues.

Collin Quigley, deputy city manager, said nForm was chosen through a qualification-based selection process to do a predesign study to evaluate potential sites of a new municipal court facility and to develop a refined scope of programming and floor plans and elevations, as well as probable costs.

The first step, Shadwick said, was a needs assessment that required a close look at the existing facility, which began being used as a municipal court facility in 1993.

“As you can imagine, their needs have evolved over those past 30 years, and also this was a building that was never intended to be used for municipal court,” she said.

Shadwick said the building has an insufficient number of courts, with just one undersized courtroom that is about half of the minimum size needed today. She added that the current docket supports a need for two courtrooms today and a third in the near future.

Wendy Garrison, chief judge of the municipal court, was present at the council luncheon with numbers to back that claim. She said 32,364 people came into the building in 2025, and there were 19,551 cases. That doesn’t count administrative hearings, she said, adding that without a separate room for these, they have to be scheduled around court hearings.

For those hearings that are required to take place within 48 hours, she said, sometimes the municipal court cannot comply due to lack of space.

Shadwick also went through some of the problems of the existing municipal court building, which is heavily used on court days, with lines wrapping around the exterior of the building for people to await screening one at a time and around the interior walls as they await courtroom appearances or the opportunity to pay fines.

The building has an undersized lobby and congested hallways, she said.

“Individuals just line the perimeter of that lobby,” she said.

The lines block access to clerks’ windows, and when people get the access they need, they do so at the expense of privacy, as they are within earshot of anyone else in the lobby, Shadwick said.

“It’s about half the size of what this lobby should be sized for based on current building code,” she said.

The clerks themselves have inadequately sized workspaces and limited surface area for them to function, she said. She added that more offices are needed. Additionally, files are stored in open office spaces and are insufficiently secured, and offsite storage is used.

“That’s inefficient from an operations standpoint when you actually have to leave your facility to gain access to some of those files,” she said.

Shadwick said there are only two toilets in public areas and no mother’s room for public or staff use, she said.

Inadequate parking means people use space owned by Jordan Valley Health with no cooperative parking agreement in place.

Shadwick also outlined issues like aging utilities and accessibility issues for people with disabilities.

Proposed building

Shadwick outlined a proposed design for a new municipal court facility. The building presented has a bottom floor for employee parking and a secure sally port for inmate use, a ground floor for administrative areas and a top floor mainly for courtrooms.

“In modern-day courthouse design, you really do see about a third of the program dedicated to circulation, and that is simply because we have to separate the public, the staff and the inmates,” she said. “You do not want those paths to cross, so this is in line with current courthouse design standards.”

The design-forward building proposed aims to integrate with and provide a gateway to the government buildings that surround it, she said, calling the design an expansion of this urban parkway along Chestnut Expressway with increased building frontage along Chestnut Expressway and Boonville Avenue.

“This is an opportunity for a gateway to the intergovernmental campus, as well as wayfinding signage,” Shadwick said. “It’s also an opportunity to incorporate local art and sculpture within the multimodal-use pathways that go through that urban parkway, creating some points of interest and points of walkability around the site.”

In coming up with the design, she said, the team looked at adjacent buildings like the Historic City Hall, the Busch Municipal Building and the Greene County Courthouse. The design incorporates elements common to these buildings, like durable stone, punched openings and strong horizontal elements.

“We wanted to be mindful and be respectful of the scale of the building as it relates to the Historic City Hall – we don’t want it overshadowing that,” she said.

Financing and timeline

Shadwick said the timeline for the building would likely be four years from the issuing of a request for proposals to completion, with 12 months for design work and 18 months for construction.

Quigley outlined a tentative plan to meet the projected cost of $42 million with about $6.5 million in one-time funds. These include $740,000 in marijuana sales tax funds from fiscal 2026 and 2027, $507,000 in fiscal 2025 carryover, $4 million in state reimbursement funds, $1 million in available court facility fees and $250,000 from the sale of the existing municipal court property – a rough guess, according to Quigley.

That would bring the balance to $35.5 million to be financed for 20 years at 5% interest, or $2.9 million.

Quigley said a subsidy from parking lot financing will be released in fiscal 2029, clearing up $800,000 per year for use, and $250,000 would be available from the law enforcement sales tax fund.

Not included in calculations were a possible allocation from the Citizens Advisory Board of Spring Forward SGF half-cent tax funds, but Quigley said the facility would be the kind of transformative project the tax is intended to fund. He added that a proposal has not been made to the CAB.

Factored together, the annual debt service not covered by one-time funds – the shortfall – is $1.84 million, Quigley said, and more ongoing revenue would have to be found to finance the remaining cost.

Councilmember Craig Hosmer made a case for the proposed building.

“There’s a reason you have big courtrooms; there’s a reason judges wear black robes, because it requires people to pay a little bit more respect to the court and to the judicial personnel,” he said.

When the facility does not match those standards, it leads to disrespect of court personnel and processes, according to Hosmer.

“I think it needs to have more grandeur,” he said. “It sounds like it’s something that’s not important, but I think it really is.”

He added that the security of judges, prosecutors and the public is also a need with a current facility that is tough to secure.

Councilmember Abe McGull said the nForm design looks nice, and the third-largest city in Missouri deserves a nice court building to accommodate residents and court personnel alike.

“Springfield has grown enough now that we should appear to be a metropolitan area, and this is quite fitting for us,” he said, adding, “I’m ready to move forward.”

The council lunch session was informational, and future steps for the facility were not announced.

The city has a not-to-exceed contract with nForm for $50,000 for predesign work, and the company has billed the city $48,500.