Columbus opens $207.5 million judicial center as its largest capital project

Columbus, Georgia, has opened the John D. Allen Judicial Center, an eight-story, 342,000-square-foot courthouse and the largest capital project in the city’s history. The $207.5 million facility, funded primarily through a 2021 voter-approved SPLOST, includes 13 courtrooms and room for four more, along with modernized technology, security and accessibility. It will replace the Government Center, whose problems included flooding, cramped spaces and unreliable elevators, and officials say the new facility will improve court operations, safety and efficiency. The center honors the late Judge John D. Allen, a Vietnam War veteran and pioneering Black jurist who became the Chattahoochee Judicial Circuit’s first African American chief judge and helped establish Columbus’s first biracial law firm.