Tomochichi Federal Building and Savannah U.S. Courthouse

A new 240,000-square-foot federal courthouse is rising on the edge of Savannah’s historic district, paired with the renovation of the adjacent Tomochichi Federal Building. The pairing pulls federal court operations and the U.S. Attorney’s office onto one campus, ending nearly two decades of split operations between the historic 1899 structure and rented space across the city.

Project Scope

The new courthouse is a five-story building sized for the Southern District of Georgia’s needs through the next 30 years. The program includes eight courtrooms (six district, two magistrate), 12 judicial chambers, a U.S. Marshals service core, and a secure detainee handling sequence that ties to the existing Tomochichi structure through an underground connector. Skanska USA Building is the construction manager-at-risk, working from a design by Liollio Architecture of Charleston, S.C., in association with Hartman-Cox Architects of Washington, D.C.

The Tomochichi rehab is the more delicate scope. The 1899 building is on the National Register and sits in a contributing position within Savannah’s historic district, which means every facade decision routes through the Historic Savannah Foundation review process. Lord Aeck Sargent is the preservation architect, and the work is closely sequenced with the new build to keep court operations running through phased move-in.

Site logistics are tight. The combined footprint sits on Telfair Square in downtown Savannah, with active U.S. Postal Service operations on one side and a pedestrian-heavy square on the other. Skanska is running a single tower crane through most of the build with vertical material runs scheduled around evening pedestrian patterns.

Why It Matters

The project is one of the largest active GSA courthouse builds in the Southeast, and it lands at a moment when the federal courthouse program is rebalancing toward smaller, secondary-market hubs. The Chattanooga U.S. Courthouse, also in design, runs at 186,000 square feet on a $180 million authorization. Hartford, Conn. is in design at 281,000 square feet. Savannah sits between those two on size, but it carries the additional complication of working in active historic-district context.

Architecturally, the design takes cues from the classical-tradition direction that the GSA has reinforced in recent guidance. The new courthouse uses limestone cladding at the base with cast-stone accents above, and the proportions are tuned to read as a peer of the Tomochichi building rather than dwarf it. That’s a quieter design move than most current federal projects, and it’s worth watching for how the finished building reads against the square.

For the local market, the build has anchored downtown trade work for three years, with Savannah-area subs taking the bulk of finish scope. The project is on track for completion in fall 2026, with a partial occupancy expected in the second half of the year and full court operations in early 2027.

Project Team & Details