Great Bend Police Chief Steve Haulmark and other city officials are really proud of the new Justice Center and are anxious for the public to see the finished product. However, construction delays will force everyone to wait a little longer to tour the facility.

The city had planned on a ribbon cutting ceremony at 10 a.m. Thursday, Oct. 5. Now, that has bee postponed until 10 a.m. Friday, Oct. 20.

“When we started the building, we knew that we were going to have some issues with lead time on different things,” Haulmark said of supply delays while addressing the City Council Monday night. “Our architect and our builders have done a pretty good job of mitigating that and doing some different things, different solutions and so forth. But now as we get towards the completion, we’re still running into a couple lead time issues.”

So, after meeting with City Administrator Brandon Anderson and the builder, they thought it would be better to postpone the event.

“We had initially planned on doing a ribbon cutting and open house on the fifth of October,” Haulmark said. “We still could do that. However, we’re not going to have everything in place and I really feel like we’d be selling it short doing it at that point.”

He said he wants everybody to really see how nice this is going to be. “The taxpayers supported us ,this is a big project and a lot of money.”

So, the ribbon cutting will take place in the morning, and he said they will have staff on hand until 6 p.m. “so folks coming home from work have an opportunity if they if they choose to come and go through a guided tour and see everything.”

The Justice Center at 12th and Baker will house the Police Department and Municipal Court. 

Ground was broken for the nearly $9 million, 20,000-square-foot facility on Sept. 12, 2022. Great Bend voters in November 2021 approved a 0.10% sales tax to help fund the nearly $9 million project.

Wichita construction firm McCown Gordon is the project manager. GLMV Architecture of Wichita was selected as the architect.