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A new federal courthouse in downtown Hartford will be built a short walk from the city’s train station, according to an announcement Monday, a decision that follows years of debate over how to replace the aging judicial complex on Main Street and the push in Congress to fund the $335 million project.
The courthouse will be built on about 2 acres on Allyn Street near Union Station, with construction expected to begin in 2027 with an opening expected in 2030.
The Allyn Street site — once targeted for housing — was expected after it named as a preferred site for the courthouse by the U.S. General Services Administration in May, surpassing two other options. Those options were a state-owned building on Woodland Street in the city’s Asylum Hill neighborhood and continuing to use the outdated, 1960s Abraham Ribicoff Federal Building and Courthouse on Main Street.
“The new Hartford federal courthouse represents our commitment to modernizing critical judicial infrastructure, enhancing court operations, and creating a secure, efficient facility that will serve the District of Connecticut and the Second Judicial Circuit for decades to come,” federal Public Buildings Service Commissioner Michael Peters said, in a statement.
United States Magistrate Judge Thomas O. Farrish praised the selection and the “important milestone” that has now been reached in the move toward the construction of a new courthouse.
Hartford Mayor Arunan Arulampalam could not be immediately reached for comment. Arulampalam backed the Allyn Street location.
The GSA, which oversees federal building projects, said it would soon start to seek an architectural designer for the project.
The replacement of the courthouse also is expected to raise the issue of what to do with the Ribicoff complex, located in a prominent spot on Main Street, just south of the main branch of the Hartford Public Library. In addition to the courthouse, the complex has space for federal offices.
The new federal court would be up to 281,000 square feet in size. Last year, the chief judge of the U.S. District Court of the District of Connecticut cautioned that rising construction costs could force a downsizing of the project.
Plans also have called for re relocating the district’s headquarters from New Haven to Hartford.
The lot is owned by Shelbourne Global Solutions LLC of Brooklyn, N.Y. — downtown Hartford’s largest commercial landlord — and Hartford-based LAZ Investments, an arm of parking giant LAZ Parking.
Construction of a new courthouse is seen as needed to tackle significant, ongoing security, space and building condition problems at the aging Abraham A. Ribicoff Federal Building and Courthouse on Main Street. Prisoner movement is through public corridors and through public entrances of each courtroom because the layout of the building does not allow for separation of public, prisoner, judge and staff movement.
The existing courthouse now has eight courtrooms and 11 chambers, many of which do not meet modern size standards. A new courthouse would have 11 courtrooms and 18 chambers for 18 judges.
Two other potential courthouse sites were previously withdrawn. One, at the corner of Capitol Avenue and Hudson Street in the Bushnell South area met with stiff opposition. The other, a parking lot across from Bushnell Park where the long-demolished Parkview Hilton once stood, was pulled in favor of other redevelopment plans.
