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It’s been a long time coming, but Multnomah County is finally getting a new courthouse.

All that’s needed to get started is final site approval from Multnomah County Commissioners at the project’s final public hearing at 10:55 a.m. on Thursday. Then the ball will get rolling.

If approval is given, project architect RFPs will go out Friday. RFPs for construction management and a general contractor will be issued May 1, and final design should start this fall, said Mike Pullen of the county’s communications office.

Commissioners on Thursday are expected to choose between two sites in downtown Portland: a county-owned site near the west side of the Hawthorne Bridge, which has been referred to by commissioners as the preferred site, or an alternate site called Block 128, a parking lot between the KOIN Tower and the Marriott Hotel.

After a presentation at an April 9 commission meeting, Commissioner Chair Deborah Kafoury and other commissioners praised the work of the new courthouse task force.

鈥淚 plan to support this project,鈥� Commissioner Loretta Smith said of the preferred site near the Hawthorne Bridge

The only objections to the site during the April 9 meeting were from supporters of the Veritable Quandary Restaurant, who voiced concerns that a disruption during construction and the loss of outdoor dining area would hurt the business of the restaurant, which is located next to the preferred site.

Erin Hokland, Vertiable Quandry’s general manager said the restaurant will remain open, even though it may have to close patio seating during construction.

鈥淲e are not closing and we are not going anywhere,鈥� she said. 鈥淲e’ve been in business 44 years, and we are not selling or moving or giving up.鈥�

Pullen said the county has met several times with Denny King, the restaurant’s owner, and hopes to allay his fears by keeping traffic flowing during construction as well as taking the patio into consideration.

鈥淥ur goal would be to work with them to retain that patio,鈥� Pullen said.

The alternate site for the courthouse, which is mostly a parking lot, would be more expensive than the preferred site because the county doesn’t own the land, Pullen said. He added that the property poses potential safety problems because of an existing underground parking lot.

鈥淵ou don’t put a courthouse over an underground parking lot because of the threat of bombing,鈥� Pullen said. 鈥淎nd it would cost about $3 million to protect this driveway and make it blast-proof.鈥�

J.D. Deschamps, the county’s project manager for the new courthouse, led a presentation during the April 9 meeting on due diligence and public input for the project along with Pullen and Mike Day of DAY CPM Services, the county’s owner representative and member of the courthouse project team.

Funding for the $250 million project, to be completed in five or six years, will be split 50-50 between the county and the state, Deschamps said.

Discussions on replacing the old courthouse, built between 1901 and 1914, have been going on for about 40 years, Pullen said. The old building is overcrowded and seismically unsafe, and replacing it is long overdue.

鈥淥ver the years there have been more than a dozen studies done on the need for a new Multnomah County courthouse,鈥� he said. 鈥淚t’s a long-delayed project and takes a lot of political will to move it forward.鈥�