Cape Girardeau County seeks best uses for courthouse, other facilities

What is the best use of the old Cape Girardeau County Courthouse?

That’s one of the questions Cape Girardeau County commissioners want answered as part of a facility review study they authorized Thursday during a brief County Commission meeting.

The commissioners unanimously approved a motion to engage Navigate Building Solutions of St. Louis to conduct a study of its facilities to help the county plan for and accommodate the space needs of various county government functions.

Presiding Commissioner Clint Tracy said he and the other commissioners want the study to answer several questions related to county buildings and offices.

“How do we create space? What’s the best flow? What’s the best use of the facilities we’ve got? And how do we augment that with the old courthouse and integrate it into our space needs solution?” Tracy said.

The old courthouse has been all but empty and unused since the county’s new courthouse, a few hundred feet away, opened in 2020.

“Right now it’s a blank canvas,” Tracy said. “It will become administrative space for the county. Who goes in there we’re not sure, but it’s not usable the way it is. It’s got to be reconfigured.”

Built in 1908, the old courthouse will likely require a complete renovation before it can be occupied by any county government offices. As part of the facility utilization study, Navigate will review the building’s design and construction specifications to help determine what sort of remodeling is possible.

“Some of the walls can come down, some of them can’t,” said Second District Commissioner Charlie Herbst. “Right now we just don’t know what we don’t know.”

The county will spend $208,420 on the study, which will be paid through the county’s use tax. A study report is expected by November and could lead to additional work with Navigate Building Solutions involving development of contractor specifications.

The County Commission previously worked with Navigate in 2017 and 2018 leading up to the new courthouse/justice center construction project.

COVID-19 Update

During their meeting Thursday, the commissioners received a COVID-19 update from Mark Winkler, the county’s emergency services director.

Winkler said 33 new coronavirus cases have been diagnosed in Cape Girardeau County over the previous seven days, bringing the county’s total case count to 9,685 since the start of the pandemic.

As of Thursday morning, there were 40 active cases in the county, he reported.

“Unfortunately, we’ve had a death this week, so that brings our total death numbers up to 135,” he said and reported the latest COVID-19 fatality was 61 years old. “So again, it’s not just the elderly that are becoming victims of this pandemic.”

The delta variant, Winkler said, is in Cape Girardeau County. “So the recommendation is, if you’re not vaccinated, you should probably get vaccinated,” he said.

Approximately 38.5% of the county’s residents are at least partially vaccinated, he said, up from 37.9% last week, with 38.5% fully vaccinated. Statewide, 40.4% of Missouri residents are fully vaccinated while nationally the percentage is 48.8%, he said.

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