The $5 million Pitkin County Courthouse renovations have been delayed as the county waits on the city’s approval of the permit needed to complete them.
Jodi Smith, county facilities director, announced the expected one- to two-week delay Tuesday at the Board of Pitkin County Commissioners work session.
The renovations to the 140-year-old county building were planned to start Wednesday.
“We’re expecting the permit to come on this week, hopefully,” Smith said at the work session. “We feel confident, it’s been a really smooth process with the city so far on this project.”
Smith explained that Aspen city staff had a few small technical questions about the planned courthouse renovations they needed answers to before issuing the permit for the project.
These answers took some time for the renovation project engineers to dig up, Smith said, and need to be reviewed before the final permit is issued.
“We were delayed in getting them (the city staff) some answers so it wasn’t any fault of anybody. It’s just kind of what happened,” Smith said at the work session.
In a short slideshow presentation, Smith went over some of the planned renovation work with county commissioner Tuesday. The renovations are set to modernize the courthouse and to take place in two, roughly five-and-a-half month phases, as previously reported.
Smith said Tuesday that the first phase should be finished by the beginning of 2020.
Although the renovations project will impact Pitkin County District Court and County Court, as well as the operations of the probation department and the District Attorney’s Office, Smith emphasized that those agencies will continue to operate as usual in the courthouse building during the construction period.
“We just want to be sure people know that the courthouse is still open,” Smith said.