A marble staircase lined with wrought iron railings and other hundred-year-old architectural flourishes once led Plymouth County Courthouse visitors up to the courtroom where 19th century American statesman, senator and constitutional lawyer Daniel Webster once dominated the scene.

But that courthouse has been collecting dust since county officials moved operations to a new property in 2007, leaving the property vacant.

Since then, Plymouth planners have been working over ideas to redevelop the Russell Street property, originally constructed in 1820. They don’t want another empty and obsolete county building in the historic district – like the adjacent former Registry of Deeds building that has been empty for about seven years and is privately owned.

The town owns the courthouse and the county commissioners building directly behind the courthouse. It also owns several parking lots in the immediate vicinity, making a three-acre courthouse development corridor a possibility. The commissioners building will likely be demolished. There is also a former police station that is unoccupied that would be razed.

The main glitch is that three private homes now separate the courthouse and commissioners building from some of the parking lots that might be incorporated into a redevelopment scheme, preventing it from being a contiguous site. Town officials are interested in somehow incorporating the homes into a potential redevelopment of the property. That could include demolishing them and offering the owners condos in a residential project, if such a project came to pass.

But this is all still just a dream, as the details are far from fleshed out. The town is just now beginning the push to attract developers to the site and is in the process of putting together RFPs for the sites. Those could include housing, retail, office or other uses. And the jury is still out on whether to create a zoning overlay district where developers would be have wiggle room from the current 35-foot height limit. Those conversations have yet to happen internally at Town Hall, as well as with the community.

Two things, however, are certain. The façade of the courthouse and the Daniel Webster Courtroom will be preserved, as was mandated in the agreement penned when the town purchased the property, said Michael Tubin, chairman of Plymouth’s historic district commission.

That’ll be easily accomplished if the Plymouth Redevelopment Authority’s planning director for the 1820 Courthouse Project has his say. Right now, Larry Rosenblum, the director, is envisioning the best use of the courthouse as a town visitor’s center. One exists now, but it’s barely noticeable along the town’s historic waterfront that boasts a replica of the Mayflower ship and Plymouth Rock, which is believed to have felt the first slap of a Pilgrim shoe.

Having the courthouse as a visitors center would do double duty to not only orient tourists to their surroundings, but also to actually lure them into the town’s commercial heart from that history-rich waterfront. Right now, most visitors to Plymouth head to the Mayflower, the Rock, maybe grab a lobster roll and then usually high-tail it to the Cape, offered Leighton Price, president, Plymouth Growth and Development Corp.

Creating a visitors center at the courthouse site would draw foot traffic there. Then, the parking spaces surrounding a small grass area in front of the courthouse could be removed and the whole section turned into a truly pedestrian-focused public gathering space, which does not exist downtown now, Price said.

“As a resident, I think it would be a terrible mistake to not do something that preserves that courthouse as a public entity,” with public use and access, Price said. “That’s been our position from the beginning.”

Another issues is that there is virtually no signage or other wayfinding around town to help guide tourists to the many historic sites farther inland from the harbor, like Burial Hill, eternal resting place for the Massachusetts Bay Colony’s first governor, William Bradford. And there isn’t a clearly-defined way of getting from the harborfront’s Water Street to the commercial district along Main Street, where shops, museums, bars and restaurants abound.