By C1 Staff
ESCAMBIA COUNTY, Fla. — The company asked to rebuild the Escambia County Jail after the April explosion that destroyed the Central Booking and Detention Facility delivered more than they were asked to.
ABC News is reporting that CGI Companies, whom county commissioners paid $150,000 in 2011 to see how much the county could save if all jail facilities were on one campus and then paid another $110,000 to add the CBD, delivered not just cost savings, but also renderings of the rebuilt facilities on a 50 acre site.
“We paid for the entail study and it hadn’t changed. This is a study on a 50 acre site, which was not the direction, because we kept saying we didn’t know how many acres it is. He’s very clearly articulating to me that this concept is based on 50 acres and so I’m a little confused,” said Lumon May, one of the commissioners. “We have not voted on the land and we have not laid that out.”
The amount of property could play a role into future facilities being placed on the site and if the new jail facility will be built with multiple floors or a one-floor, horizontal building. Commissioners said the drawings made it appear that the county had already voted on the location and facility, which was not the case.
Commissioner Grover Robinson asked other commissioners to forget about the drawings, and to focus on the fact that the report said the county could save money combining the main jail and the CBD by cutting operational costs.
“So whether we get two or five acres, the cost is going to be relatively the same,” Robinson said. “It’s going to be around $160 million and we’re going to have to figure out how to pay for it, but at the end of the day we’re going to say operationally by going in this direction?”
“That is my belief, yes,” said Jack Brown, county administrator.