More dollars, more feet: county discusses jail design options

By Steve Van Kooten

On April 17, Greg Callin, vice president of client services for Kraemer Brothers, returned to the Crawford County Finance Committee with a second schematic budget for the replacement jail project.

“If you remember back to two weeks ago, we gave you a schematic budget that was off of the design we started with for the jail addition, and, if you recall, that design had some costs in there and we thought we should look at alternatives,” said Callin.

The budget presented to the committee on April 3 increased the jail’s size to accommodate larger housing units for inmates, which also added costs for mechanical systems and detention equipment, among other ancillary expenses.

The second budget featured a “more traditional design” in an attempt to reduce the size of the building and find alternatives for those other costs.

“That’s given us an opportunity to drive costs down,” Callin said. “We felt there was square footage we could squeeze out of the building, both in terms of length and width within the housing units, and then some common spaces as well.”

Kramer Brothers reduced the size of the jail addition by 3,000 feet from the previous schematic budget without a loss in capacity or bed count. The space reduction allowed Kraemer Brothers to decrease the general construction budget by $805,000, mechanical systems costs by $550,000 and miscellaneous costs (detention-grade equipment) by $1,315,000.

The approximate total savings between the two schematic budgets was $2.85 million.

Callin put it simply: more feet mean more dollars. With less space to build, costs are reduced in other areas, including mechanical systems (such as HVAC and electric), detention equipment and material costs.

Callin, along with Kraemer Brothers’ Project Manager Mitch Gilbertson, reviewed the budget to decrease the project’s price tag. The site development costs, which included landscaping outside the building and the utilities project on Hayden Street, decreased by $75,000.

The Hayden Street project includes work on the street’s paving, curb and gutter and sewer systems.

“We dug deeper into the landscape plan and looked at it more closely and felt the budget could be tightened up.”

The cost savings extended to the jail’s kitchen needs. Currently, Crawford County out sources their food services to the Grant County detention center for meal preparation and transportation. The county originally planned to have a 1,300-foot kitchen as part of the new facility.

“We looked at areas of the building that are most expensive, and one of those areas is the kitchen,” said Callin. “We asked ourselves, What if we take this down to just a prep kitchen? What could the potential savings be?”

The newest budget reflected Callin’s suggestion, with 1,000 square feet of kitchen space and equipment eliminated. The cost savings were approximately $750,000.

“Was that your original plan, Dale? To have a full kitchen and staff it?” Robin Fisher, the county clerk, asked Sheriff Dale McCullick.

“Yep, that was the original plan,” McCullick said.

The Sheriff said the county planned to continue out-sourcing food services for as long as possible; however, he called it “a little foolish” to build a new jail without the capability to house a full kitchen because out-sourcing may become prohibitive if food costs increase in the future.

The county currently spends approximately $130,000 per year — around $8–$9 per day per inmate — on food services, according to McCullick.

“If we want an employee-based kitchen, those are all general operating costs,” Gary Koch, finance chair, said. “We just don’t have the wiggle room.”

“I don’t want to be sitting here 10 years from now listening to people say, ‘Why did they build a jail and not at least put a kitchen in there?” McCullick said.

“I’m not opposed to building out the kitchen for the future,” Koch said.

Callin presented a hybrid solution, which built out the jail’s capacity for a full kitchen without the estimated half-a-million dollars in equipment costs. The hybrid solution would add $200,000 in costs back onto the project, reducing the budget-to-budget savings to $2.6 million.

The total project costs from the newest budget varied between $29.7 million with the full kitchen taken out of the design and $29.9 million with the “hybrid” solution, where the building retained the space but did not install all of the equipment for a fully operational kitchen.

“If the county told us to look at something further from a cost reduction standpoint, I think we’d be looking at the program itself,” said Callin. “It would start to cut into the initial intent and desire of that building.” He mentioned the jail’s capacity, bed count and service programs were areas that the jail committee would have to explore to reduce the project’s cost.

“I think we’ve controlled the design and engineering components as best as we can. We can’t control the inflation; that’s more than we wanted it to be.”