New Fort Lauderdale U.S. Courthouse

Federal courthouse projects have a reputation for running long. This one is not. The new Fort Lauderdale U.S. Courthouse reached roughly 80 percent completion in April 2026 against a fall 2026 substantial completion date, three years after GSA awarded the design-build contract in February 2023.

Project Scope

The building runs 10 stories and 252,000 gross square feet, with 12 courtrooms and 17 chambers for the Southern District of Florida. GSA awarded the roughly $196 million design-build contract to Brasfield and Gorrie, with HGA as architect. Beaubois supplied the architectural glazing and curtain wall package.

The site sits along the Tarpon River just south of downtown Fort Lauderdale. That location drove substantial flood-resilience design work, since the existing courthouse at 299 East Broward Boulevard has documented floodplain and security problems that are the reason for the replacement in the first place.

Why It Matters

The Southern District of Florida carries one of the heaviest federal caseloads in the country, and the Fort Lauderdale division has been running out of a building that no longer meets federal courthouse security standards. Twelve courtrooms is a substantial capacity addition.

For contractors, the interesting number is $196 million for 252,000 square feet, or about $780 a square foot, delivered design-build and roughly on schedule. Federal courthouses are among the most constrained building types in the market: blast and progressive-collapse requirements, secure circulation separating judges, juries, defendants and the public, and GSA design standards that leave little room for value engineering. Hitting 80 percent at three years on a riverfront site in a hurricane zone is a genuinely good result, and it is a useful benchmark for anyone pricing GSA Region 4 work.

Project Team & Details