With firm’s hiring, stalled planning for new Jackson County jail gets a jump start
Planning for a new Jackson County jail has resumed nearly three months after county legislators put the process on hold.
The legislature voted unanimously Monday to pay a consulting group $1.3 million to determine how big a jail is needed and how it should be laid out.
Afterwards and at added cost, the consultant proposes to oversee the design of a new jail, select a location for it and manage its construction.
Commercial real estate developer Newmark Grubb Zimmer and CGL, a national company that specializes in building prisons and jails, jointly submitted the successful bid to oversee the project, forming a stand-alone company called JCDC Partners LLC.
Last summer, a county selection committee recommended that legislators approve an $8.8 million contract with JCDC Partners that would have covered all phases of the planning and construction process.
But legislators put off consideration for several weeks in August and September, over concerns about spending that much money at a time when taxpayers were angry over real estate assessment notices.
After the legislature withdrew the contract, JCDC Partners submitted a new bid that broke up the work, which the county will pay for in installments for a total of $8.8 million. That does not cover construction costs, which could be more than $200 million.
JCDC’ Partners’ timetable calls for completion of a new jail in May of 2024.
County officials began discussions in early 2017 on whether to replace or renovate the 35-year-old Jackson County Detention Center and its 20-year-old annex. Decades of deferred maintenance had taken a toll on a facility that was often overcrowded and understaffed.
Millions have been spent since on fixing sewer pipes, replacing cell doors that wouldn’t lock and paying at least three groups of consultants to analyze the facility and its operational deficiencies. They all concluded that building a new jail. made more sense than renovating the current one.
The detention center’s main, eight-story tower has security issues — areas, for instance, that are out of security-camera range — and requires more staff per square foot than a modern jail on one or two levels might, consultants have said.
In January, a consulting team led by the firms Shive-Hattery and HDR estimated that a new jail would need to house up to 1,800 inmates, but no fewer than 1,300, and cost between $230 million and $270 million.
The current’s jail’s tower has 760 beds, but a functional capacity closer to 549 beds. On occasion, however, as many as 977 people have been jammed into it, with some of them sleeping on cots in the gym.
Adjoining the tower is a three-level, 132-bed jail annex built in the 1990s to meet the demands of a federal judge. Alongside both is a five-level art deco structure built in the 1930s called the Regional Correctional Center, which until earlier this year had space for 153 prisoners being held on municipal charges.
The county did not renew its contract with Kansas City, but is now working out a deal that would have some city prisoners return to the RCC.
For now, no decision has been made on how big the new jail will be. JCDC Partners will announce its suggestions sometime in 2020.
This story was originally published December 9, 2019 at 1:21 PM.
