Several local, state and federal officials have been on a worthy campaign lately to land McAllen a new federal courthouse in the upcoming years.

The current downtown facility — in the iconic Bentsen Tower, which houses the U.S. District and Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas — no longer meets the demands of our growing region, especially with the explosion in immigration-related criminal cases that these federal courts and judges have had to take on these past couple of years.

In addition, the current leased facility is privately owned and has very expensive monthly rates, as well as costly overhead for any improvements or renovations, we’re told.

All parties that we have spoken with regarding this building — from lawyers to lawmakers to judges to elected officials — agree it would be better off to start fresh and construct a new federal building in McAllen that meets the specifications of the courts’ high case loads and security demands and budget rather than to continue operating at the old Bentsen Tower.

Therefore we are encouraged by recent events that appear to indicate that a new federal courthouse could be in our future.

This came about after U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, and others at the congressional level persuaded U.S. Judge D. Brooks Smith, who is chairman of the Committee on Space and Facilities for the U.S. Judicial Conference, to last month come to McAllen to visit the current facility for himself. Any new federal courthouse project must go through Judge Smith’s committee so getting him here — and the fact that he had enough interest in our area to agree to come — was key to seriously starting this process.

Then a few weeks after Smith’s June 3 visit, it was announced that a feasibility study has been recommended to assess the need for a new federal courthouse here.

The study is one of the first documented indicators that a new federal courthouse could become a reality. Thanks are in order to Cuellar, as well as U.S. Reps. Rubén Hinojosa, D-McAllen, and Filémon Vela, D-Brownsville, who all have led efforts for the advancement of a new courthouse.

But there still is much lobbying to do in the upcoming weeks. Any recommendation from the feasibility study will be reviewed in September when the Judicial Conference of the United States meets. This is the national governing and policy making body of the federal judiciary. Hopefully they will adopt the project. If so, it would then be pitched to the General Services Administration, which would oversee and manage any and all construction and plans.

Cuellar, who serves on the U.S. House Appropriations Committee and is credited with helping San Antonio to get $135 million for its new federal courthouse, has told us that McAllen is one of the largest cities without its own federal courthouse.

“McAllen is in need of a dedicated court space that is safe and able to meet the needs of a growing case load. I am pleased to see that this feasibility study is moving forward and I thank my colleagues at the federal, state, and local level for continuing to work together on this important project,” he said in a statement.

“The McAllen division of the Southern District of Texas handles one of the busiest federal dockets in the nation and is long overdue for a new state-of-the-art federally-owned courthouse that will address current and future space and operational needs of the courts,” Hinojosa said.

Interior as well as exterior conditions at the current federal facility affect cases and can restrict dockets.

We’re told nearby trains are so loud on the lower court floors that it sometimes brings cases to a halt. Transporting shackled prisoners safely up the 11-story tower also is challenging for federal law enforcement officers. The tower wasn’t meant to be used as a courthouse when it originally opened in 1988. In fact there used to be a bank in the lobby.

After the Oklahoma City bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building and the 9/11 attacks, security at federal buildings became a serious issue. Currently, the front parking lot is closed to protect the north side of the building, which also has a barricade set up. This limits parking spaces and can make it difficult to get to court on time.

If a new federal courthouse is built here, we’re told it would likely be three to four-stories-tall and the design would meet current standards to minimize potential terrorist attacks or outside threats.

The City of McAllen has offered to donate land for a new courthouse at the site of the old Sam Houston School, at Jackson Avenue and 16th Street, a few blocks from City Hall. This is an ideal downtown location and such a building there would help to revitalize the south side neighborhood as well as create local jobs.

Ultimately, we believe that it would be a far better use of taxpayer funds and resources to have a newer, safer federal courthouse built in McAllen rather than to continue to lease 150,000 square-feet in a tall office tower not well suited for such use. We hope Judge Smith and his committee agree and we await the findings of the feasibility study and welcome future visits by them here if that will push this issue forward.