San Luis Obispo County, New San Luis Obispo Courthouse

The Superior Court of California, County of San Luis Obispo - New San Luis Obispo Courthouse project provides a new 12-courtroom courthouse of 145,000 square feet in the city of San Luis Obispo. It includes secured parking for judicial officers. The project will require acquisition of a site of approximately 2.5 acres. It will replace/consolidate the court’s operations and courtrooms currently in three existing San Luis Obispo facilities: San Luis Obispo Courthouse Annex (at 1050 Monterey Street) and two offsite staff office locations. The project will use the Design-build delivery method.

Gross Square Footage: 144,631
Total Courtrooms: 12
Current Authorized Project Budget: $291,895,000
Criteria Architect: Moore Ruble Yudell Architects & Planners
Design-Build Entity:: TBD
Construction Management Agency: TBD
Fund: General Fund

San Luis Obispo County is served by eight superior court facilities located throughout the county. These facilities are the Paso Robles Branch Courthouse (civil and family law matters), Grover Beach Branch Courthouse/Clerk’s Office Building (traffic matters), and in the city of San Luis Obispo, the San Luis Obispo Courthouse Annex (criminal, traffic, juvenile dependency, civil, family law, and probate matters), Juvenile Services Center (juvenile delinquency matters), Veteran’s Memorial Branch Courthouse (traffic matters), and two offsite staff office locations. The new courthouse project will replace and consolidate the court’s operations and courtrooms currently in the county-owned San Luis Obispo Courthouse Annex and the two offsite staff office locations.

The San Luis Obispo Courthouse Annex is the superior court’s largest facility and is substantially out of compliance with regulatory safety, seismic, accessibility codes, and Judicial Council space standards. Among the significant functional issues are its undersized lobby and space for entrance screening for the volume of daily court users. And undersized courtrooms with inefficient layouts, poor functional adjacencies, undersized/lack of space for jurors to assemble and deliberate, no secure attorney-client interview rooms, and no path of circulation for in-custodies separate from the public and judicial officers and staff. Owing to overcrowding and space shortfall within the Courthouse Annex, the court must house a portion of its staff within two offsite office locations.

For this project, acquisition will be required of site of approximately 2.5 acres in the city of San Luis Obispo.

The New San Luis Obispo Courthouse will accomplish the following immediately needed improvements to the superior court and enhance its ability to serve the public:

• Provide an accessible, safe, efficient, and modern courthouse in the city of in San Luis Obispo.
• Improve security, relieve overcrowding, and improve operational efficiency and customer service through consolidation.
• Provide court operations in a facility with adequate space for greater functionality than in current conditions in multiple locations, including:

• Safe and secure internal circulation that maintains separate zones for the public, staff, and in-custodies.
• Secure, dedicated in-custody sally port to the courthouse and secure in-custody holding facilities adequate in number.
• Adequate visitor security screening and queuing in the entrance area.
• Provides secure and nonsecure attorney-client interview rooms.
• Adequately sized public waiting areas. o Adequate space for self-help area.
• Has ADA accessible spaces. o Adequate spaces for jury deliberation and jury assembly with capacity for typical jury pools.
• Facility with dependable physical infrastructure.

• Realize court operational efficiencies and savings from improved space adjacencies through consolidation of operations and services.
• Remove the existing San Luis Obispo Courthouse Annex from service, which is rated as a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) P-154 High-Risk seismically deficient building.
• Avoid substantial deferred maintenance and security system refresh expenditures.

This project is in the Immediate Need priority group and consequently is one of the highest priority trial court capital-outlay projects for the judicial branch.

This project is currently in the Acquisition phase. 

The Performance Criteria phase is estimated to begin in July 2025 and complete in February 2026.

The Design-Build phase—including Construction—is estimated to begin in June 2026 and complete in April 2030.

Images pending development of project design.