If approved, the first major construction project would be a new courthouse to house all court operations, including general division, probate, juvenile, and court offices. The $23 million building would be constructed at the site where Greenewood Manor used to be on Dayton-Xenia Road.
The final version of the facilities master plan is also pending discussions with the judges of each of the county courts in early October, County Administrator Brandon Huddleson said.
“They had some initial concerns, which is why we’ve done it this way intentionally, so that we can garner their feedback before the final version is approved,” he said.
The county also plans to demolish the old Greene County Jail and Sheriff’s Office downtown, and replace it with a building that would house much of the county services that are currently on Ledbetter Road.
The new jail under construction on Greene Way Boulevard is on-time and within budget, Huddleson said, and is still expected to be complete at the end of 2025.
Other new construction includes a new building for the Board of Elections at the west campus, and renovations to existing buildings including those of Animal Control, County Services, the Greene County Engineer, the existing Juvenile Court building, and the Adult Detention Center.
Once all county services are moved out of the Ledbetter Road campus, the shopping center will be marketed for business uses, Huddleson said.
“That’s ideal, because that’s where Xenia is projected to grow going forward,” he said. “With what’s going on with (Athletes in Action) and the Wooden Center and all of that out that way, that really opens up that 42-35 corridor for development.”
In working with Dayton-based engineering consultant Woolpert, the county wanted to accomplish three main goals, Huddleson said: not hurt downtown Xenia, pair departments that frequently work together, and improve the customer experience for those who use county services.
“So if we moved out of here in total and consolidated out west, let’s say, what does that do to ... the downtown businesses, not only with the traffic that we are as employees, but also didn’t want to load too much downtown to where it’s overloaded,” Huddleson said.
In 2022, Greene County spent about $1 million of its American Rescue Plan Act dollars in upgrading the Ledbetter Road facilities, primarily towards building a new media room and community gathering space, and upgrading the Board of Elections’ early voting systems.
Though the Board of Elections will eventually abandon the space, the early voting upgrades will still be in use for the better part of the next 10 to 15 years, Huddleson said.
“What that million dollars bought us, really, was we built (the media room) so that we could free up other space for elections,” he said. “What we saw in 2020, those lines and everything, we just didn’t have the space through we do now. So that was the goal.”
The Greene County courthouse would become home to the Greene County Archives as well as offices for a few other county services. Under this plan a portion of the courthouse would become a museum, and otherwise be more accessible to the public.
“Back in the day, there wasn’t the security that there is now. You could just walk in that courthouse on any of the four sides, all the doors were open,” Huddleson said. “It’s a public building. I think that’s another opportunity here to get more people, more interested people, through there to look at it, to become more of a public asset than it currently is.”
As Greene County has grown, the historic courthouse alone doesn’t adequately support court functions in today’s world, Huddleson said. Greene County’s Domestic Relations court moved out of the building to the Ledbetter campus in the 1990s.
“If you look back 50 years ago, all county functions were in that building. Everything: Commissioners, sheriff, courts,” he said. “The beauty of this is the commissioners, by Ohio Revised Code, one of their requirements beyond funding all of those various departments is to provide adequate space for all these operations. So this plan gives everyone either new space or remodeled space.”
Woolpert was paid $600,000 for their consultation work on the facilities master plan.
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