In 2021, Crow Wing County realized that there would be a backlog of court cases following a return to work after the pandemic. With one shelled out courtroom space left unbuilt from Wold's original 2005 design, the County decided to use federal COVID relief funds to construct a sixth courtroom. Crow Wing County engaged Wold to study how to best configure the new courtroom to allow the most flexibility. A high priority was to design the courtroom in a manner that would allow social distancing for a full 14-person criminal jury trial. However, designing the courtroom to adapt to normal capacities was also important.
Wold developed a courtroom design that maintains a permanent judge's bench, witness stand, court clerk, and reporter station. The jury box, courtroom rail, and gallery seating are all modular and movable allowing the expansion of the jury box for social distancing or simply more attorney tables for hearings with multiple parties. The courtroom can be reconfigured for civil trials, criminal trials, family court hearings, or juvenile hearings.
To further support continued court operations in the event social distancing is reinstated, Wold designed an adjacent pair of jury deliberation suites to be combined into a single large deliberation room to allow 14 jurors to deliberate while maintaining social distances. The true challenge in this project was designing the modular components to be easily moved by facilities staff, relatively immovable once set up and also maintaining the decorum of a courtroom.