The Des Moines-based Trinity Construction Group has made steady progress since January on remodeling the Dallas County Courthouse to suit the relocated offices within the 117-year-old edifice.
Two familiar first-floor offices — the Dallas County Clerk of Court and the Juvenile Court Services — are now settled or at least settling into their new second-floor rooms on the east side of the building, according to Dallas County Clerk of Court Anna Butler and Juvenile Court Services Officer Supervisor Linda Colby.
Their vacated first-floor offices have been gutted and show few traces of their former occupants, apart from the enormously heavy Kardex Lectriever motorized file cabinet left by the Clerk of Court on the east-side rooms. Digital record keeping has rendered the behemoth obsolete.
On the west side of the first floor, the rooms formerly filled by Juvenile Court Services are bare, and the Dallas County Information Services Department, which vacated the northwest corner of the first floor in 2016, left nothing in its wake but a few floppy discs and some dog-eared 386 manuals.
The first floor of the courthouse will be remodeled for use by the offices of the Dallas County Treasurer and Dallas County Recorder. Treasurer Mitch Hambleton and Recorder Chad Airhart said they are eager to see their long-anticipated move to the first floor completed.
The Dallas County Board of Supervisors approved Trinity Construction’s $359,000 bid for the remodeling project at its Dec. 11, 2018, meeting. The contractor has so far been paid $22,486 for work completed in January, $48,260 for work in February, $22,990 for March work and $110,485 for April.
Trinity aims to wrap up the job by May 28, according to Dallas County Operations Director Rob Tietz. The only remaining construction in the courthouse will then be the new courtroom planned for the west side of the second floor, to be paid for by the Iowa Department of Correction’s Fifth Judicial District.
The supervisors approved in February a $90,288 bid from All Makes Office Equipment Co. to furnish the remodeled courthouse offices.
