HAMILTON TO HAVE NEW COURTHOUSE

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 403, 11 July 1928, Page 1

HAMILTON TO HAVE NEW COURTHOUSE

WORK STARTS SOON END OF LONG AGITATION (From Our Own Correspondent.) HAMILTON, To-day. The erection of a new courthouse in Hamilton will be commenced in the course of a month or two. The secretary of the Hamilton Law Society has received a telegram from the Hon. J. A. Young, Minister of Health, in which he says that the Minister of Justice has advised him that Cabinet has now approved of a grant sufficient to enable the work of building a new courthouse to be put in hand. He added that plans and specifications are now nearly completed, and a start should be made with the work in the course of the next month or two.

There has been a prolonged agitation for a new courthouse in Hamilton, owing to the total inadequacy of the present building. When Sir James Parr was Minister of Justice he visited the building, and so satisfied was he with the need for a new building, that he arranged for an exchange of sites between the Justice Department and the P. and T. Department. The latter’s site in Knox Street was selected for the new building, plans were prepared, and £IO,OOO was put on the estimates for tha preliminary work, but the work did not start. Subsequently the present Minister of Justice announced that the Government had no money to spare for the building. f