Wednesday, March 21, 2001
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Wednesday, March 21, 2001 |
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Courthouse/jail bids to be opened By DAVE HAMRICK
Design work on a new jail and courthouse complex for Fayette County is complete and bids are currently being received from construction firms that want to do the job. A formal bid opening is set for Tuesday, March 27 at 2 p.m. in the commission chambers at the County Administrative Complex. The county's engineering firm, Mallett and Associates, and the Ingram Parris Group, architects for the judicial complex project, will evaluate the bids before the County Commission votes to award the contract, possibly as early as April 12. Officials are hoping for ground breaking by May, with completion two years away. Meanwhile, overcrowded conditions at the existing jail are being relieved by a contract with Union City's oversized facility. Fayette is paying $45 a day to house prisoners there. Commissioners recently met with the architects and engineers to go over the plans one last time before the project was put up for bid. Estimated cost for the jail and courthouse, including renovating the old courthouse for use as a sheriff's office, is $55 million. Jim Ingram of Ingram Parris Group, design architects for the project, presented floor plans and color renderings in an informal meeting with commissioners. Architects and consultants met with all the senior officials involved and resolved most of their concerns during the preliminary design phase, he said. Only minor changes were included in the final design. The plans Ingram presented show six new jail pods, each with space for 64 inmates, and each easily divided into spaces of 40 and 24, in case there's a need to separate small groups from the main prison body, such as females or violent criminals. Security is paramount in the design, he said. "Minimizing inmate movement is central to it," he said. "If the inmates generally stay put, it's a more efficient facility to operate, and it's more secure," he added. Inmates will eat, sleep and get some outside recreation time without having to move about in areas other than their living units, he said. And they'll travel in tunnels from jail to the new courthouse for trials. Separate elevators will take them to holding areas next to the courtrooms, with the general public using a different set of elevators and judges using a third set. The three-story courthouse will have an open atrium, with offices for security officers right next to the main entrance. Along with facilities for the clerk of court, two Magistrate Courtrooms will be on the first floor. Two identical Superior Courtrooms and two State Courtrooms will occupy much of the second floor, along with a 200-seat jury selection room and a grand jury meeting suite. Courtrooms will have extra room at the back for media coverage, and one courtroom may be set up with extra space for particularly high-profile cases, said Ingram. All entrances will have panic locks and will be monitored by closed circuit television, he added.
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