ANNAPOLIS — The Board of Public Works approved a $147 million contract Wednesday to replace the current “inadequate” Maryland Courts of Appeal Building with a new six-story, environmentally efficient building on Rowe Boulevard in Annapolis, just north of the current District Court.
The contract was awarded to Bethesda-based Coakley & Williams Construction, which is expected to start work in a couple of weeks. Construction is expected to take three years, according to a statement from the Maryland Department of General Services.
The new building will replace the Courts of Appeal Building, which opened in 1972 and has not only outlived its usefulness but faces numerous structural problems. Supreme Court Chief Justice Matthew Fader called the new building a “generational investment” that will demonstrate the importance of justice in Maryland.
But Fader, speaking to the board, had less lofty goals, too.
“It is my hope that the heat will work in the winter, and only in the winter, that less water will fall from the ceilings, that the power will be more reliable and we’ll have significantly less mold,” Fader said.
Besides having heat that works and ceilings that don’t leak, the new building will have a courtroom for the Maryland Supreme Court and three courtrooms for the Appellate Court of Maryland, the state’s intermediate appeals court, as well as office space and chambers for judges on both courts.
The 217,000-square-foot building will have space for boards and judicial committees that cannot be accommodated in the current courts building, as well as space for a law library and a Maryland law history museum, said Gov. Wes Moore.