By Mike Finney

DOVER — Construction on the Kent County Family Court building at the corner of South Governors Avenue and Water Street has recently begun, promising to bring a new structure and an adjoining 378-car garage to the downtown area.

Sean O’Sullivan, a spokesman for the Delaware Family Court, said the project is running a little bit behind schedule but said the expanded facility should be completed in about a year and a half.

“We had our groundbreaking a couple of months back but there were some logistical hurdles they had to get through, one of which was where was ... essentially the staff parking lot for the existing courthouse,” Mr. O’Sullivan said, of the nearby Kent County Courthouse.

“But before they started the site work there, there’s a piece of property directly across the street which they leveled and turned into a parking lot. So, now that’s the staff parking lot.

“That sort of delayed the work. They’re doing the site work on the actual site itself now that they created a new place for people to park.”

The $117.7 million, three-story, 106,711-square-foot Kent County Family Court will replace an outdated 35,000 square-foot building at 400 Court St. in Dover that was built in 1989.

Construction is underway simultaneously with the building of a Sussex County Family Court in Georgetown, which is expected to be completed around six months sooner than the one in the capital city.

“At the one in Georgetown, they’re sort of starting the scaffolding going up and it’s actually starting to look like a building,” said Mr. O’Sullivan.

“So, this one (in Dover) trails that. I think that was sort of the sequence of the groundbreaking and is also expected to be the sequence of when they open.

“Sussex will open first and then about six months to a year later the Dover one will open.”

Mr. O’Sullivan said the courthouses are being built because studies dating back more than a decade showed the existing Family Court facilities in Dover and Georgetown were unsafe by modern court standards and causes issues for attorneys, litigants and court staff.

Among other problems, the waiting areas and courtrooms do not allow for adequate distance between participants or privacy for discussions with counsel.

In addition, court staff and judicial officers have to share elevators and hallways with detainees, rather than each having their own secure areas, as exist in other modern court facilities in the state like the Kent County Courthouse.

The facility will have more courtrooms — eight as opposed to the current six — and those courtrooms will be more than twice the size of the existing courtrooms (1,400- to 1,800 square feet in the new building versus an average of 600 square feet in the existing courthouse).

The additional courtrooms will allow Family Court to better handle the volume of cases in Kent County, which has nearly doubled since the existing courthouse opened in 1989.

The Kent County Family Court facility is being built using a number of architectural details that reference the surrounding historic district.

The Delaware judiciary made it a priority to keep the courthouse in downtown Dover as part of a commitment to keep city and town centers in Delaware thriving.

The courthouse will be on what had been a Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control and Environmental Protection Agency brownfield site that has had difficulty attracting development or reuse.

Delaware Family Court Chief Judge Michael K. Newell participated in the groundbreaking ceremony for the Kent County Family Court building Sept. 22, 2022.

“This is an historic day for the city of Dover, Kent County and the state of Delaware and it is another historic day for the judicial branch and especially the Family Court of the state of Delaware,” Chief Judge Newell said at the ceremony.

“The new Kent County Family Court Courthouse is similar to the new Sussex County facility in many ways as both used the same basic layout and plans for efficiency in design and construction. Both buildings have the same number of courtrooms and similar safety features, though the exterior of each is different, tailored to each community.”