Jail design committee meets

Cleveland County officials began the process of developing plans for a new county jail at an “information gathering” meeting Wednesday at the county fairgrounds building.

Chaired by Norman architect Ben Graves — the jail’s designer — the meeting included county commissioner Rod Cleveland, assistant district attorney Dave Batton, jail consultant Don Jones, undersheriff Eddie Thomason and sheriff’s department officials Doug Blaine and Sid Stell.

Graves said the meeting was held to gather input which could be used to help his firm design the new facility.

“We wanted to defer this meeting until the commission and the sheriff had an opportunity to discuss the site location,” he said. “We’re trying to prepare a program of your jail needs to be presented to the architect and commission, so we can develop a plan.”

On Monday, the Cleveland County Board of Commissioners voted 3-0 to locate a new county jail on a 28.92-acre tract of land bought by the county in April. That land — purchased at a cost of $1.3 million — is near Franklin Road and 24th Avenue NW.

While no action was taken at the meeting, Graves said he was hesitant to discuss ideas about the jail in front of the news media for fear of generating “coffee talk.”

“The one thing I don’t want is to get information out in public that hasn’t been decided on yet, in error, where we have coffee shop talk,” he said. “We’ve had it two years now. We need to get it to a point where the information that we do put out is accurate; that way we’re going to keep from having confusion with the public. It isn’t an effort to hide anything, just a process we go through.”

On other projects he’s been involved in, Graves said the planning process was closed.

“We’ve not done that (open meetings) in other counties,” he said. “We’ve done a planning process and then offered that document, once it’s completed, to the newspaper and said, ‘these are our decisions, they were made on this date and this is how we’re gonna proceed.’”

Some of those issues discussed included the number of beds in the facility, whether the new jail would include the Cleveland County sheriff’s office, transportation access to the location, the needs of other communities that use the facility, future expansion of the new jail, how the jail would be funded, and how the county would use its existing downtown jail over the next decade.

Additional concerns, Graves said, were raised by residents of the Franklin Road area.

“In visiting with the families out there, Commissioner Skinner and myself have made a pledge to them to locate the facility as far to the south as possible,” he said.

Jail consultant Don Jones urged the group to make plans which include “issues such as laundry, kitchen, staffing and future growth.”

“Ask yourself, ‘Will there be a sheriff’s office out there?’” he said. “‘And how would we include it later?’ Those issues have a definite impact on jail operation.”

Jones, from Cushing, said construction costs for the facility could be expensive. “Each square foot could be anywhere from $150 to $300,” he said.

Graves said the committee also should seek input from other governmental departments and city officials in the county, including those in Norman, Moore, Lexington, Noble and Oklahoma City.

“We’ll be getting other departments involved to learn their needs,” he said. “We’ll try to break down the areas we’re going to need a lot of information on.”

As an example, Graves cited plans by the Oklahoma Department of Transportation to reconstruct the US 77 overpass. Plans that were unknown by county officials until recently.

“Commissioner Sullivan talked to ODOT and the City of Norman,” he said. “And no one was aware that in the fall of 2008 they (ODOT) were going to start reconstructing the overpass. They are going to bring it (the overpass) in farther to the south. And they’re proposing to move the intersection 500 feet to the south.”

Graves said members of the committee would meet with city and ODOT officials to discuss how the project would be funded.” There is a possibility the county would donate property for the right of way,” he said.

With dozens of issues remaining to be examined, and at least two months work ahead, the committee broke into groups to gather information about the jail’s administration, location and funding. The goal, Graves said, was to have some type of document ready for commissioners by mid-November.

“When we get through, it’s going to be the most innovative jail done in the state of Oklahoma,” he said. “But the truth is we can’t design this jail for Sheriff Beggs, he’s not going to be sheriff forever. We have to design it for the community.”

The committee is expected to meet again next week.