After years of shelving courthouse expansion plans, the Warren County commissioners are ready to “pull the trigger’ on a new courthouse annex building and they intend to pay cash.

About five years ago, the price tag on a common pleas and county court expansion was about $30 million. Through the years, and the bad economy, the commissioners have alternately shelved plans and sent architects back to the drawing board.

The latest plan calls for a $6 million to $7 million, 50,000 square foot annex to the common pleas court. It will house the prosecutor’s office, court services, the board of elections and the 911 dispatch center. Requests for proposals will be going out to architectural firms shortly.

Through the years the commissioners, when the price tags were higher, considered borrowing money, but no more.

“We’ve been saving for that for a while,” Commissioner Dave Young said. “So yeah, what we are talking about is funding with cash.”

The county paid $14 million cash in 2001 when it built the 150,000 square foot administration building.

The common pleas court has been bursting at the seams for years, with people and files stacked up in hallways, working out of rooms that used to be closets and in trailers. The annex will have plenty of room for everyone, and then some, according to facilities director Mike Shadoan.

“It’s a 20-year growth plan,” he said. “The prosecutor will not outgrow this building.”

Shadoan said if all goes according to plan they could break ground on the building this spring and open it for business next year.

Young said they have come a long way on this long-awaited project.

“When we first looked at this it was $25 million that was where we started in 2008,” he said. “Then it went to a $13-$14 million project and we were an inch away from doing that, I mean we were pulling the trigger on that. Then we collectively came to the decision, what do we actually need.”

He said what they have found they need is office space, so that’s what they plan to build. Shadoan said once the ball is officially rolling on the annex, then talks will begin on how to reconfigure the existing courthouse, to best utilize the freed up space.