Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, July 08, 1995 TAG: 9507100058
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RADFORD LENGTH: Medium
The New River Regional Jail Authority approved final details Friday for an application to the state Department of Corrections. This will be one of the last regional jails to qualify for the 50 percent funding.
State participation in regional jail construction has dropped to 25 percent since the jail for Pulaski, Giles and Grayson counties and the city of Radford was approved earlier this year.
The 144,000-square-foot jail will be in Pulaski County, but the site has not been pinned down. The jail authority discussed the location for more than an hour in closed session.
The jail will have nine units to house prisoners, including two 36-bed minimum-security units, four 24-bed medium-security units, and one 24-bed maximum-security unit for men, and two 24-bed units for women, one each for minimum and medium security. Bill King of the architectural firm Thompson & Litton presented the plans, which include the structural support for a 600-bed jail, since it will be less expensive to build this capacity initially than to add it later.
The authority will apply to Rural Economic & Community Development, formerly the Farmers Home Administration, for a loan guarantee for the localities' half of construction costs. It will also seek as much in a low-interest loan as it can get from the federal agency.
As now planned, guards would not be in the units with prisoners but would supervise them from separate pods. Law enforcement representatives on the authority said the safety this design would provide for guards makes its extra cost worth it.
The plan also includes costs of renovating existing jails in the four localities, as well as one in Galax, which holds some Grayson County prisoners, so they meet standards for 24-hour holding facilities for prisoners awaiting transportation to the regional jail. The cost is estimated at more than $1 million.
Those jails would also be equipped with television communications systems so prisoners could be arraigned in their localities by magistrates elsewhere by a video link costing $875,000.
The project, to be started in 1997, would be completed in early 2000, including the upgrades to the local jails, King said. The operating budget for the jail is estimated at $3.3 million for its first year.
Assistant Radford City Manager Bob Lloyd, regional jail authority chairman, asked King to shorten that time. He said both construction costs and local jail maintenance costs might go up in that time.
Besides, after working on it since mid-1991, Lloyd said, "I sure would like to see this thing get built in this century."
by CNB