As Haywood County commissioners begin planning renovations to the historic courthouse for county offices, there’s one thing they have enough of for once: space.

Planners are starting to get a handle on just how much space was freed up by the exodus of the court clerks, the sheriff’s office and soon the jail. So far, preliminary designs for the historic courthouse rennovations reveal a real windfall to a few departments.

The county attorney could be the biggest winner, going from no office space to more than 800 square feet. Chip Killian, the current attorney, works on retainer for the county but spends most of his time with a law firm in the Raleigh area where he has carved out a career as a successful lobbyist.

Haywood County Commissioner Larry Ammons commented on the generous space allotment during a workshop on the historic courthouse renovations held Monday (Sept. 19).

“It seems we have three rooms for county attorneys. We only have one county attorney,” said Ammons. “I mean that’s really future growth.”

The county commissioners didn’t fare too badly either. They currently have no office space, but wound up with three offices totaling more than 1,000 square feet in the preliminary plan.

“I didn’t foresee needing this much space,” said Commissioner Kirk Kirkpatrick.

“Certainly we don’t need three rooms,” agreed Commissioner Chairman Mark Swanger. “Just a desk with a phone and somewhere to pick up the mail.”

County Manager Jack Horton and his three-person staff got quite a space boon, too. The four of them will have more than 2,000 square feet located off the historic courtroom. That’s for Horton, assistant county manager Rick Honeycutt, public information officer and grant writer David Teague and a receptionist.

The architect said he developed the space projections based on interviews with the county departments.

On top of several roomy offices, the preliminary plans show that all county offices located in the annex behind the courthouse will fit into the main historic courthouse building, freeing up an entire office building. One suggestion was to use it for storage, but commissioners said they would like to relocate some of the county offices currently housed in satellite buildings, like the planning department, into the space.

“I thought one of the things we were trying to do was move some of the folks out of the annexes we have now,” Kirkpatrick said.

— By Becky Johnson