Smith County commissioners approved a study to determine the feasibility of moving four district courts into the former Carlton Hotel near downtown.

The feasibility study will be led by HDR Architecture Inc. Senior Project Manager Paul Chastant in association with design and engineering professionals experienced in courthouse design.

HDR will provide programming and planning concept development services for the district courts and related departments currently occupying the Smith County Courthouse, according to Smith County.

These include the district courtrooms, hearing rooms and associated judicial staff; district attorney; law library; district clerk; jury rooms and associated support spaces; sheriff/security spaces; detention spaces for defendants in custody; information technology; and facility maintenance and building support functions.

The study will be done in three phases, including program verification and review of existing conditions, conceptual design and structural analysis and cost analysis and diagrammatic recommendations, according to a news release.

The 115,000-square-foot structure was built in 1954 and sits at the corner of Broadway Avenue and Elm Street. It has a three-story, 126-space parking garage as well as a rooftop swimming pool and cabana. The historic structure was formally used by the county as the Smith County office building, and the last Smith County office workers moved out of the space in late 2013.

“The last piece of the 2008 Master Plan was to address the Smith County Courthouse and court system space,” County Judge Joel Baker said in a news release. “That is what this study will do.”

The focus of the study will be to determine the viability for renovating building and associated parking garage to house the district courts, as well as estimate the cost for building a new facility, according to the county.

The existing courthouse would remain in operation if the study determines the Carlton can accommodate a portion of the court system, according to the release. If it is a viable option, the four district courts would move into the Carlton, and the three county courts-at-law would remain in the courthouse.

The downtown courthouse originally housed two district courts and one county court, as well as several county offices. Since then, two district courts and three county courts-at-law have been added, and the county court has been relocated to the annex on Elm Street, according to the county.

Smith County commissioners rejected a $475,000 offer for the building in October. Baker said at the time he didn’t expect to entertain another private offer until the county determined how it might use the space.

“The county has heavily invested in downtown,” Baker said in the Tuesday release. “It makes sense to determine whether the space we already own can be used for county purposes.”

When county offices occupied the Smith County office building, it was not feasible to renovate the space for those offices, Baker said in the release.

“We believe this may be our answer to provide better courtroom space for the future in the most economical way,” Baker said in the statement.

Staff writer Adam Russell contributed to this report.

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