Courthouse halfway finished

WAUPACA – It’s been a long year for Ron Hansen, the Waupaca County Courthouse Maintenance Director. He’s been the boots-on-the-ground supervisor of the building’s massive renovation project and now he has some good news to share: on Monday, Aug. 10, the main entrance will be reopened and when visitors step inside, the familiar offices will be back in business and the interior will look fresh and new again.
Morale, he said, was running high among the county employees that have endured makeshift offices over the past months. They are ready to move into their new workspaces and some were already emptying file cabinets and moving dolly-loads of files ahead of schedule. Hansen’s crew is in charge of getting everyone settled: the computers, people and paperwork first to get everyone up and running, and then moving the small and miscellaneous stuff.
“The project has been on schedule, absolutely on track,” said Hansen. Miron, the main contractor, and their subcontractors, have kept the project running smooth.
After Aug. 10, visitors will pull into the rear parking lot via Matheson Street that is connected to Royalton Street. The parking lot has flip-flopped. In the past year, visitors entered on Harding Street. That entrance will be closed off and already it is fenced off for repaving. The other side of the parking lot has jet-black asphalt with freshly painted parking spaces and new light poles. The old split-rail fence that surrounds the parking lot is back up, along with new landscaping. There will be signs on Royalton Street to guide visitors in.
The old entrance that was stained and streaked with some kind of weird mold or rust is gone. The new main entrance has modern-looking façade with an overhang that has a hospital entrance vibe, like where an ambulance would pull up in a rainstorm. The entrance and parking area is more handicap accessible than before.
The “guts” of the building are new: the plumbing, the ductwork, the HVAC and the other unseen essentials. Overall, construction and remodeling work is halfway completed. Imagine the building being split in half from roof to basement: the eastside is done and departments will be functioning at full capacity in their forever homes while the westside will be under construction. There will be interior signage guiding visitors to the orphaned departments that are still operating out of temporary workspaces.
Hansen said the westside of the building is scheduled to be completed and reopened at the end of June or the beginning of July in 2027.