Jail possibilities shown to county committee

Two different construction management firms offered very preliminary presentations Tuesday night about how Bedford County might be able to construct a new jail and justice center, with one firm suggesting the use of the former Wal-Mart facility on Madison Street.

The presentations were made at a meeting of Bedford County Board of Commissioners' courthouse and county property committee. The committee is still in early fact-finding and took no action on the issue Tuesday night.

Local sheriff's department officials have said that the jail is overcrowded, and court officials say they need more space and to be able to comply with new security regulations which some have said the current courthouse would never be able to meet.

SouthBuild LLC, a Memphis-based joint venture of an architectural firm and two contractors, discussed a similar conversion it is doing to an old Wal-Mart facility in Brownsville for the Haywood County justice system. The Wal-Mart itself is being converted into courtrooms, clerk offices, sheriff's offices and other support facilities, while a jail facility, because of the special needs of jail design, is being built onto the end of the building.

SouthBuild representatives Jim Lankford, Wayne Smith and Robert Wright discussed the logistics of doing a similar conversion to the Wal-Mart facility on Madison Street in Shelbyville.

Glasgow, Ky.-based Alliance Corp. did not discuss any specific sites in its proposal, but rather focused on presenting the advantages of using construction management services rather than bidding a general contractor.

Bedford County School System has used construction management services for all but one of its recent building projects.

When hiring a construction manager, the building owner pays an agreed-upon fee, and then the construction management firm bids out the actual work to subcontractors. Tim Geegan and Jim DeCesare of Alliance Corp. said this allows the county to choose the firm it would like to work with rather than being forced to take a low bidder of questionable quality.

The local school system has used a specific structure called "construction management at risk" in which the construction management firm guarantees a specific maximum price for the project and is responsible for any overages. When County Finance Director Robert Daniel asked about this, Geegan and DeCesare simply said a variety of construction management plans are possible, including construction management at risk.

Former Tennessee Commissioner of Transportation Bruce Saltsman is an advisor to Alliance Corp. and was present Tuesday night.

Downtown merchants and attorneys have objected at previous courthouse committee meetings to the idea of moving court offices away from the general area of the square, saying it would devastate the downtown business district by reducing its traffic.

But Lankford said that "going vertical" -- designing a multi-story facility to fit on a smaller lot near the square -- would lead not only to higher construction costs but to higher jail staffing costs. SouthBuild officials said that the design of a jail has a direct impact on how many jailers are needed to staff it; a poorly-designed jail can result in higher staffing costs over the entire life of the facility.

Sheriff Randall Boyce said during the meeting that if a new jail is built, the existing jail would likely be converted for use as the juvenile detention center.