Rather than build an entirely new jail at taxpayer expense, Peoria County instead will try to get as much life as possible out of its existing facility.
Sheriff Chris Watkins said the decades-old jail needs a series of upgrades to keep the detention center operational for up to 20 more years.
“Building a new jail, or tearing down the old half of the jail and building a $80-$100 million renovation or expansion, that would raise people’s tax dollars. So, we’re not doing any of that work,” Watkins told WCBU. “We’re going to focus on the renovation side of what we have to buy time.”
Late last month, Watkins joined Melissa Woods, the county’s director of strategic projects and capital planning, in a presentation before the Peoria County Board’s executive committee to discuss the options that had been under consideration.
“Would I love a new jail? Yes. We just know it’s not feasible right now with taxpayer money,” Watkins said at the meeting. “So I think right now, the key is to buy time so 15, 20, 25, years from now, we can go to the public and say, ‘It’s time for a new jail.’”
The cost of building a complete new jail now at a cost of at least $200 million was ruled out entirely. Another possibility, as Watkins mentioned, was to develop an addition to the existing jail, with a new housing unit.
But the preferred option now is to take it one step at a time to keep costs at a minimum.
“We do have some existing liabilities in the jail facility, and to just keep the building operational over the next 10 years, we need to make a significant investment that ranges between $22-$31 million,” Woods told the committee. “That’s an estimate to the best of the ability of the information that we have at this time.”
Initial priorities
Watkins said developing new kitchen and laundry facilities, mechanical repairs, and space for mental health needs are the initial priorities.
“Right now, we’re just going to put out a bid to a contractor/architect to look over that first phase of the kitchen, and then from there we’ll move on to replacing our mechanicals,” he said. “That’s where we’re at now, but there’s still several steps we have to do to get there.”
Watkins said the consultants who were hired to assess the jail situation and suggest the three options found the facility itself remains structurally sound, but the cooking space, air systems and plumbing need upgrades.
“Like I said, our kitchen needs attention, and then the plumbing and HVAC is from 1980s so it’s [used] 24/7 — every day it’s running. So those need some attention, too,” said Watkins.
One possibility for a new kitchen may be to convert a gym that’s currently being used as storage space.
“We’ll probably have the architect look at the gym to see if that’s a possibility so we’re not building more space here. But I foresee a couple issues with that, so we’ll see what happens,” he said, noting that by having an all-civilian kitchen crew now, the jail may be able to build a more cost-effective food preparation area.
“There’s certain codes where if you have detainees and inmates around kitchen equipment, you can’t have gas or electric — you can have some electric,” he said. “Right now we use steam, which is a very old school way of doing things. So, a new kitchen can be a lot more efficient that way since we’re using civilian staff.”
Watkins said it’s likely one of the jail’s housing units will be converted into what he called a “mental health pod” to meet a growing demand.
While the current jail has a capacity of 520 and the daily population currently fluctuates between 250-300, Watkins said the consultants stressed consideration of declining incarceration rates whenever the county does look into building a new jail.
“What if it’s 180 [detainees] 15 or 20 years from now? And Illinois’ population is declining,” said Watkins. “There’s a lot of unknowns, so you want to get it right. And this kind of buys us time to get it right in long term.”
