District Court to relocate to current LifeWays Building

HILLSDALE — The Hillsdale County Board of Commissioners now have a solid plan where the 2B District Court will be relocated once the lease on the Courthouse Annex is up in four years.

Commissioner Doug Ingles, the commissioners’ facilities chair, said the plan is to move the 2B District Court to 25 Care Drive behind the Hillsdale County Jail. The location is the current home of LifeWays Community Mental Health.

Ingles said LifeWays is exploring options of either building a new building next door to its current location or they may move off site.

The commissioners have once again turned to the National Center for State Courts to draw up a floor plan for the building and once that is received, the commissioners will know how much money the move is going to take.

The LifeWays building on Care Drive is already owned by the county of Hillsdale. Adopting the floor plan recommended by the National Center for State Courts will likely call for changes to the layout of the building.

“There’s going to be money needed, absolutely,” Ingles said. “We don’t really have that final number yet.”

More: Courthouse renovations could cost another $1 million

Ingles said the county will use money already available and not be seeking a millage to make the move happen and that the move will likely coincide with the timeline of the county’s current lease with Hillsdale Renaissance who purchased the Courthouse Annex building as part of a larger plan for business development in downtown Hillsdale.

While renovations at the historic Hillsdale County Courthouse are underway, the building cannot house another courtroom without an addition.

The commissioners sold the current Courthouse Annex Building to PAGO USA, a developer, in 2022 and signed a five and a half year lease to figure out how to proceed with the court's space needs moving forward.

More: Hillsdale County weighing options for relocating District Court

The NCSC was previously brought in to determine a space needs study and give the commissioners options that included multiple options for additions to the historic courthouse, moving two courts to Care Drive or renovating the existing Courthouse Annex Building.

The previous board of commissioners put a loose plan in play when they purchased the former Hillsdale Daily News building in 2018 and renovated it before relocating all non-court related county offices there from the Courthouse Annex’s second floor and the historic courthouse.

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Their plan, at the time, called for removing a load bearing wall in the historic courthouse to form a third courtroom but an architectural study commissioned by the new board of commissioners found that to not be feasible, which then led to the NCSC study.

The commissioners agreed to proceed with selling the Courthouse Annex Building without having a solid plan in place for the 2B District Court, calling the sale the “first step” in the process.

Renovations to the historic courthouse have already exceeded $10 million with much of that funding coming from the county’s $8.8 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds and recent discoveries in failing masonry could cost the county an additional $1 million and a delay of the exterior work by one year.

— Contact Reporter Corey Murray at cmurray@hillsdale.net or follow him on X, formerly Twitter: @cmurrayHDN.

This article originally appeared on Hillsdale Daily News: District Court to relocate to current LifeWays Building