Clerk's Everyday Services Move to New Lewis Speedway Service Center on Monday

Starting Monday, Aug. 3, the errand you used to run at the courthouse counter happens at a different building. The St. Johns County Clerk of the Circuit Court and County Comptroller begins serving residents from the county's new Public Service Center at 4040 Lewis Speedway in St. Augustine, just south of the Judicial Complex and next door to the St. Johns County Permit Center. Passports, marriage licenses, recorded documents and public records searches are the big ones.

The county announced the change in a July 29 release, saying the new center will make it faster and more convenient for residents to get at the Clerk's most frequently used services without going into the courthouse.

Clerk Brandon J. Patty's office handles the paperwork almost every household eventually needs. The divisions moving to the Public Service Center are Official Records and recording, marriage licenses and ceremonies, passport applications, and Minutes and Records, which covers public records searches and Value Adjustment Board petitions.

Court business is a separate line. Traffic ticket payments and payment plans, evictions, small claims, name changes, divorce and adoption filings all run through the Clerk's Customer Care division, whose lobby keeps its 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday hours. Customer Care is still reachable at (904) 819-3600, and that is the number to call if you are not sure which building your errand belongs in.

Appointments are available, not required, for marriage, passport and recording services. The Permit Center next door runs on its own schedule, 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. weekdays at (904) 827-6820, so a Friday-afternoon permit question and a 4:45 p.m. records copy are two different trips.

You may not need St. Augustine at all

Residents in the northwest of the county have closer options for marriage licenses and ceremonies, both appointment only, both without a dedicated ceremony space (they are performed at the customer service counter, and photography is not allowed).

Location	Hours
Julington Creek Annex, 725 Flora Branch Blvd.	9 a.m.–3:30 p.m., Mon–Fri
Ponte Vedra Annex, 151 Sawgrass Corners Dr.	9 a.m.–3:30 p.m., Mon and Wed

Before you drive over

Two things save people a wasted trip. Passport renewals generally do not happen at a counter at all: if your passport expired less than five years ago and you were at least 16 when it was issued, the Clerk's office directs you to mail Form DS-82 straight to the U.S. Department of State. And Florida residents face a mandatory three-day waiting period on a marriage license unless both parties complete a premarital course, which also drops the fee from $86 to $61. A ceremony performed by the Clerk is $30.

The Lewis Speedway campus has been growing for a while. The county signed off on a $13.5 million, 34,000-square-foot addition there in 2024, roughly doubling the size of the permit building that opened in 1999 and adding 245 parking spaces, according to local news reports at the time. Anyone who has circled that lot at 10 a.m. on a Tuesday will appreciate the parking more than the square footage.

What the county has not spelled out is whether the courthouse will keep any walk-up window for records or marriage paperwork after Monday, or whether staff will simply redirect people to 4040 Lewis Speedway. If you have an appointment already booked for this week, confirm the address by phone before you leave the house.

More on county decisions, closures and service changes is always at St. Johns Community Website, and you can read more government and politics stories here. Follow us on Facebook for updates as they happen, and if you make the trip Monday, tell your neighbors how it went and join the conversation in our Community Forum.