Reagan: Search Continues For Jail Location

Clay County officials continue to search for a suitable site that could handle the county jail project.

County Mayor Dale Reagan said the the county owns a small amount of land and wants to avoid buying more. Reagan said another factor they have to consider is the infrastructure costs that differ for every potential site.

“We’re going to have to probably downsize than what our original plan was,” Reagan said. “We looked at the original plan of being about a hundred-bed facility and now we’re looking at the possibility of downsizing that maybe twenty to twenty-five, something like that to the area of around sixty, sixty-five, something like that.”

Reagan said they have one site they are looking into that would be closer to the county court than the last location. Reagan said they are still working with the Department of Corrections and have their architect and engineers to assist them.

“It’s very disappointing to us because we were looking forward to getting by this time ready to be a long way along with it,” Reagan said. “But when that came in $11 million, it figured out to be about $800 a square foot. And when we first started this, planning this back before the COVID hit, we were looking at building costs of about $375 a square foot.”

Reagan said the money previously set aside for the jail is still being held in a reserve and cannot be used for anything else.

“Hopefully it won’t be too awful much longer we can have another get together and have a report and maybe tell some, have a different direction here that we’ve got some news to give everybody,” Reagan said.

Reagan said they hope to find a site sooner than later but do not have any estimates for how long the search may take going forward.