The new Cobb County courthouse will be six or seven stories high, but one thing is certain: It will have a brick clock tower that pays homage to the one that gazed over the Marietta square for nearly a century.

As the county prepares to seek construction bids on the project, estimated at $55 million for six stories, a design team on Tuesday made its recommendations for location and layout.

Commission Chairman Sam Olens said the 200,000-square-foot should remind residents of the old courthouse, which sat just off the square on Roswell Street until it was replaced by concrete, steel and glass in 1966.

Olens called the decision to demolish the 1873 courthouse "a day that was lost in the county."

In that retro way of today's architecture, the new building will look classic, but contain the latest in courthouse security, officials from The Facility Design Group said.

It is a consideration in the forefront of designers' minds given the March 11, 2005, Fulton County courthouse shooting in which a judge, a stenographer and a sheriff's deputy were killed, allegedly by a man on trial.

The structure will sit three blocks east of the square, at the back end of the county's judicial complex. It will front on Haynes Street, bounded by Lawrence and Washington streets, across from the Marietta City Hall. A pedestrian bridge above Haynes will link it with the other judicial buildings.

The design team was trying to work within the $55 million tentatively allocated from the 1 percent sales tax approved in 2006 for roads, jail expansion and the courthouse.

The team proposed six stories containing enough space for a dozen Superior Court judges and their courtrooms — two more than Cobb has — and offices for the district attorney and sheriff and their staffs.

A lower level on the back houses the secure area for transporting prisoners into the building and then up separate, secure elevators.

The commissioners said they would like the bid specifications to include a possible seventh floor that would be built as a shell to be finished later.

Virgil Moon, director of county support services, is overseeing the project, said he hoped to have bids returned this fall.

Because of rising construction materials costs, he warned, "This is going to be a challenge to keep within budget."