By Kyle Balk-Yaatenen - Jan 4th 2023
JANESVILLE
Work is continuing this winter on a $96 million building update and consolidation at the Rock County Sheriff’s Office in Janesville, after ground was broken last summer.
Curtis Fell, who was elected in November and is being sworn in today as Rock County sheriff, said in an interview last week that construction workers are currently laying the foundation of new buildings and putting up a new fleet garage.
In the end, there will be 200,000 square feet of new and remodeled space at the sheriff’s office and jail site on Highway 14 in Janesville.
The plan is for construction to completed by 2024, followed in 2025 by the demolition of what has long been known as the Pinehurst building, to make way for a new parking lot.
The Pinehurst building was originally a tuberculosis sanatorium in the late 1920s. It now houses Huber work release inmates and patrol and administrative offices. Fell and outgoing Sheriff Troy Knudson said it is wasn’t originally designed to house inmates or law enforcement offices and is not a functional modern space for any aspect of their operations.
The Rock County Board approved the project in April by unanimous vote, with one supervisor absent.
Fell said it was long overdue, noting that the building that holds administrative offices hadn’t been updated since the 1980s.
The project will bring efficiencies, Fell said.
In just one example, the fleet garage “will enable us to be able to respond quicker, and the cars will be in better shape,” he said. “They won’t all be frozen up or anything and officers won’t have to waste time scraping off their cars.”
Fell said the upgrades will help with recruitment and retention of staff.
“The people we work with are the biggest selling point we have, it would be nice to have a building that reflects that,” he said.
Fell said the project has been proposed three times in the past, on a larger and more expensive scale, with a proposed cost of up to $166 million.
He said this time, nearly half of the cost—$45 million—is earmarked for the patrol and the front office area.
Construction is being done in two phases, starting with replacement of the Pinehurst Building and then renovation of other areas, including the jail.
“It actually encompasses two steps in the master plan,” Fell said. “It keeps being called the jail project, which upsets people, but really it is just a revamp of the jail and reconstruction of the patrol side.”
Prior to it granting approval to the project, the Rock County Board reviewed the most pressing needs at the site, deciding in the end that those included a need for updated showers, a bigger kitchen and recreational space for inmates.
“It will make the inmates feel better, which is just the right thing to do. It should have been done years ago,” Fell said, of the planned new recreational area. “Giving an inmate a chance to get out of their cell and do anything outside makes a huge difference in behavior, it makes things better for them and for our employees.”
Capt. Kimberly Litsheim said every year inspectors cite deficiencies at the jail that include the outdated showers and lack of a courtyard or recreational space for the inmates.
“There are back rooms with significant water damage, closet walls that are dissolving and ceilings that need replacing and significant water incursion,” Knudson also said. “Most of my career we have been dealing with flooding.”
“The building is falling apart,” Fell said.
Knudson said over the years small “Band-aid” fixes have been made to the Pinehurst building.
“I give the maintenance staff a lot of credit for being able to keep it running for as long as they have and trying to make it function as well as they could,” Knudson said.
“We really didn’t address the needs that were on the jail end, much less the patrol one,” he added.
Fell said the expansion will provide some new space to grow into.
“We tried to set up this revamp as best we could for the future, so … we don’t have to keep asking the county board for more money,” Fell said.
The project cost includes new computer systems at the sheriff’s office and new technology like body scanners to help keep illegal substances from being smuggled into the jail.
“We have a lot of issues where people are overdosing in the jail,” Fell said. As part of the planning process, “we toured Eau Claire County and they have them there and they were able to show us the different things that they caught.”
Fell also shared architectural plans that show big new windows on both the patrol side and in the jail.
“Our jail staff spends most of their time in the dark or rooms lit by fluorescent light, so having these windows to let the light in is very important,” Fell said. “It’s important to let them know how much we value them by having a space that shows that.”
In the jail, the windows will have bars but they aren’t going to be the normal type, he said. They’ll be smaller, to look better.
“It’s to give it a more natural look and to connect people with the outside world,” he said. “And that natural light does help with (inmates’) demeanor.”
Fell said jail records show that inmate mental health issues are more prevalent than in years past. Having a modern space staffed with more mental health workers and more probationary staff will hopefully lend more opportunity for inmates to progress toward a successful release.
“How we turn people loose from here needs to change,” Fell said, so they aren’t released and soon return.
Litsheim said the current state of the jail contributes to inmate misbehavior.
“It’s uncomfortable and old,” she said. “There is no soundproofing to the walls, so everything echoes. That gets to be an issue when you have inmates yelling and an officer trying to hear what is happening. It just makes everyone frustrated and that’s what sometimes leads to people acting out.”
View Article Here.