The Sullivan County Commissioners
completed its version of the hat trick, viewing a presentation from the
third of the three top jail facility architects in the state of Indiana
at their bi-monthly meeting on Monday.
Recently, DLZ and RQAW
were the other two companies to make presentations to the commissioners
and some members of the county council.
On Monday, Elevatus
Architecture, based in Fort Wayne, took its turn. Two of the nearby
projects on their resume include the Clay County Jail and the U.S.
Penitentiary in Terre Haute.
About 90% of jails in the state are being done by these three companies, the sheriff stated previously.
Cory
Dietz, Director of Marketing and Business Development for Elevatus,
said they had been in business about 60 years. He noted until 2015 they
were known as SchenkelShultz, then it was changed to Elevatus Architecture.
“We’re responsible for about 35
justice projects in Indiana, currently working in six counties in the
state, two out of state,” Dietz said. “Our work encompasses a lot of
things, everything from county jails, to courthouses, to juvenile
centers, to federal penitentiaries. Anything, you name it.”
One of their projects was at Guantanomo Bay, Cuba.
“It’s about really all I can tell you about that. They don’t even tell me all the good information. So …," Dietz joked.
That
project through the Department of Defense included Camp 5, a maximum
security facility; Camp 6, a maximum security housing unit; and Fleet
Hospital, an addition to this complex within Camp Delta.
At the
commissioners meeting, Elevatus made a PowerPoint presentation featuring
its building component diagrams — which include areas for
administration, intake, inmate services, inmate housing, enhanced inmate
services and an area used for future housing.
Photo examples were shown of these various unit components from a number of their numerous facility projects.
Their
Clay County Jail project was a new construction completed in 2006, with
45 cells, 205 beds, covering 5,320 square feet at a cost of $10.5
million.
The U.S. Penitentiary, Terre Haute, was completed by
Clark Construction in 2004. This was a new construction with a scope of
719,000 square feet, 1,200 beds, costing just under $124 million
dollars.
Other county jail projects highlighted include Adams,
DeKalb, Jay, Kosciusko, Porter, Wayne and Decatur counties in Indiana.
Other projects featured were in Georgia, North Carolina and South
Carolina.
Closer to home, Dietz praised the current usage of the
Sullivan City-County Correctional Facility, despite it being originally
built for just 34 beds.
“You’re still cooking meals and cranking
out services for a 34-bed facility but you’ve got 111 inmates that need
all those kinds of things,” he said.
The commissioners and county
council members have visited several different facilities over the past
few weeks, with Sheriff Clark Cottom mentioning a recent visit to Posey
County’s jail. Several county inmates are housed their currently.
What
is next for the commissioners to alleviate the increasing overcrowding
issue at the current jail, like so many other counties are dealing with?
“At
this point and time, we are still gathering information, trying to
figure out what we want to do next,” commissioners’ president Bob Davis
said after the meeting. “There’s a lot of steps to this process and we
are learning more and more as we go. So, I mean at this point in time,
we are really just trying to gather information.”