Jail Work Center to be sold when new jail opens

This plot of land, to the west of Labounty Road and near Sunset Avenue in Ferndale, is currently under consideration for the new jail site.

A new Whatcom County Jail would likely trigger the sale of the county’s Jail Work Center on Division Street, according to Wendy Jones, chief of corrections at the Whatcom County Jail.

If it became available, the facility and adjoining property would be a sizeable space for one or more potential businesses.

The Work Center, which houses up to 150 inmates, cost $7.9 million to build and was financed by a voter-approved sales tax increase of 0.1 percent. If the building were sold, Jones said the money from the sale would be used toward paying off a new facility.

“But I think it’s all kind of up in the air right now,” she said, and added that the building could be considered for a potential treatment facility instead.

The Jail Work Center, housed at 2030 Division St., was never meant to be a permanent facility, Jones said.

“The original plan was to sell it (once the new jail opens)," Jones said. “It was constructed to meet industrial criteria so it would be easy to retrofit for industrial or manufacturing use.”

Steve Moore, owner of Moore and Co., a commercial real estate company, said that he had a hand in leading the county toward constructing the building as an industrial building, rather than just a jail.

“I told them, ‘You can’t sell a jail,’” Moore said. “I told them they needed to build an industrial building” so it could be sold later.”

That later may come soon, as the county is moving forward with the planning process for the new jail.

At the Whatcom County Council meeting on Jan. 29, council members approved a contract with DLR Group, Inc. to begin planning the new jail.

Although the timeline on the Build A Safe Jail website – referenced by Jones – indicates the jail would not be completed until as late as May 2019, Ferndale City Councilman Keith Olson said that would be too long.

“I don’t think they can wait that long to get a new jail,” said Olson, who recently retired from the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol and saw the jail on a regular basis. “The one they have is crumbling. I don’t see how it (the new jail) could be any more than three to three and a half years out, instead of six.”

Olson said he thought the project would get fast-tracked as the need is so urgent.
Jones agreed that the current jail is “falling down.”

A $3.1 million overhaul was set to begin in fall 2011 to repair some of the most dire issues with the current jail, but reports indicated that even with those repairs complete, the need for a new jail won’t lessen.

The county is currently considering a location in Ferndale at Labounty Road and Sunset Avenue. County documents indicate the site is 40 acres total and the Build A Safe Jail site reports that a facility as large as King County’s new SCORE facility, which houses 800 inmates, would easily fit on the site.

The SCORE facility was also designed by DLR.

Planning documents indicate that the new jail would be a single-story facility, as this requires fewer guards to monitor.

The county chose DLR from seven proposals which were submitted last summer. DLR was recently voted number-one architect by ARCHITECT magazine and had done more than 100 corrections or detention center projects before.

The current jail building will most likely be torn down when a new facility is completed, Jones said. Most estimates show it would cost more to repair the building for another use than to simply tear it down and start fresh, she said.

Currently, there are no estimates available for the cost of the new facility or the value of the Division Street Jail Work Center if sold.

At the time the idea came up to construct the interim Jail Work Center, police officers and sheriff’s deputies were unable to make arrests on low-level offenders due to excessive overcrowding at the jail.

Although some of the overcrowding has been relieved by the Work Center, the jail still frequently operates double capacity.