![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/AS_011629_Courthouse0313.jpeg\" "\\"The")
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The Gordon D. Schaber Sacramento County Courthouse on 9th Street in downtown Sacramento, photographed in 2016, handles
\ncivil and criminal cases. <\/p>\n
Andrew Seng<\/p>\n
Sacramento Bee file<\/p>\n
Sacramento\u2019s historic Gordon D. Schaber Courthouse is for sale for $13.6 million, a potential \u201cblank canvas\u201d in the middle of the city\u2019s downtown, said brokers, as a new courthouse prepares to open near the city\u2019s Railyards.<\/p>\n
The Sacramento County courthouse building at 720 Ninth St. has occupied a city block in Sacramento\u2019s downtown for 60 years. With a gleaming new Tani G. Cantil-Sakauye Sacramento Courthouse<\/a> ready to open at 500 G St., later this month, the Schaber site is on the block.<\/p>\n The listing for the building\u2019s owner, the Judicial Council of California, was posted Tuesday, and commercial brokerage CBRE is handling the sale.<\/p>\n What will become of the historic downtown block isn\u2019t immediately clear.<\/p>\n Costs to convert the building to potential residential use including replacing its decades-old heating and cooling system \u2014 presently fed by chilled and heated water from the county administration building at nearby Eighth and H streets \u2014 would be \u201cprohibitively expensive,\u201d said CBRE executive vice president Randy Getz, who is handling the sale with CBRE senior vice president Jim King.<\/p>\n Considering its historic status, developers may have to navigate other obstacles.<\/p>\n But developers could opt to tear down the courthouse property, Getz said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a 2\u00bd-acre blank canvas to develop something of a signature property in Sacramento,\u201d Getz said. \u201cIt\u2019s big enough, it\u2019s close to the Railyards, which is burgeoning, and it\u2019s close to private and public transportation. Ultimately, we\u2019ll find out what should go there.\u201d<\/p>\n Sacramento County built the Schaber courthouse \u2014 named for the late longtime McGeorge School of Law dean and Sacramento Superior Court judge \u2014 in 1965. The courthouse was also home to the county\u2019s district attorney and public defender, but the need for more courtrooms forced the offices to move in the 1970s and 1980s.<\/p>\n The six-story, 470,000-square-foot building, bordered by Eighth, Ninth, G and H streets, had long been derided by Sacramento Superior Court and city leaders as too obsolete, undersized, and unsafe<\/a> to conduct court business.<\/p>\n Calls for a new courthouse grew louder in the last 10 years as local leaders appealed for answers.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Schaber courthouse served ably the community for decades, but we simply outgrew it,\u201d Presiding Sacramento Superior Court Judge Lawrence G. Brown told The Sacramento Bee earlier this year<\/a>. \u201cWhat had been office space for the district attorney\u2019s office, probation, public defender, all of that, was ultimately consumed by the need to create more courtrooms. Even then, we were busting at the seams.\u201d<\/p>\n Superior Court employees and functions are in the middle of their move to G Street. The new Sakauye courthouse is expected to be fully operational by April 27.<\/p>\n Related Stories from Sacramento Bee<\/p>\n