Courtroom space in the new building will be delayed because of cost overruns, officials say
by Mary Rupert
Ground was broken today for a new $27.2 million Wyandotte County Juvenile Justice Center near 8th and Ann Avenue in Kansas City, Kansas.
The new building will separate juvenile inmates from the same building as adult inmates. Juveniles have been housed in the Wyandotte County Jail since about 1990, according to Sheriff Don Ash, but the juveniles have been separated from adults in a different section of the jail.
The building is directly west of the current court services building where juvenile cases are heard. According to UG information, the new three-story facility will have 47,000 square feet with space for juvenile detention, administration and programming.
The building is expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2020, according to the UG.
The new facility and those working toward it for years received a lot of praise at the groundbreaking event. One local attorney, though, was concerned that there would not be courtrooms immediately available inside the facility, as had been discussed at an earlier stage of the process.
Mayor David Alvey today confirmed that the UG is delaying finishing out the courtroom space inside of the new juvenile building because of cost overruns. However, he said that space will be in the building, able to be finished sometime in the future.
Alvey: ‘To bring justice’
“Throughout all this work, one purpose has united all efforts, to create a Juvenile Justice Center that will help to bring justice for our community and for those young people and their families who will come here,” Mayor Alvey said at the groundbreaking. “Justice, when pursued above our own self-interest, above and beyond our own self-protection, has a way of making a claim on us. When we pursue justice above all else, we will see fruits of reconciliation, of peace, of health of mind and body and spirit, of growth of young people and their families, and of our entire community.”
Commissioner Brian McKiernan said they were there because of the vision of Sheriff Ash, and also the hard work of a multidisciplinary team, the criminal justice collaborative, meeting for years to improve services.
“This day represents yet another stepping-stone in the development of our downtown area,” said Commissioner Melissa Bynum, and also praised the sheriff’s vision.
Wyandotte County District Attorney Mark Dupree said he thinks the new juvenile facility is extremely important.
“I think the sheriff and the collaborative have done a good job in pushing forward with this and bringing Wyandotte County to a level of understanding that placing juveniles in the same place with adults is not good for the community, nor is it good for the youth,” Dupree said. “This facility will give us the ability to provide young people that are in custody the resources that they need to hopefully never come back into custody.”
The juveniles will have the opportunity to receive counseling and go to school in the new facility, Dupree said. There will opportunities for other groups and organizations to work with the juveniles that are not able to do so now because of a lack of space, he said.
Study recommended separation of jail population
“This is really not the beginning of something here, it’s the end of the beginning,” Sheriff Ash said at the groundbreaking. It started nine years ago with a collaborative that came together to look at the criminal justice system here, he said.
District court judges, community corrections, the sheriff’s office, the mayors and district attorneys all worked on this project, he said. The vision was borne out of all that work, he said.
The collaborative has worked hard to identify those people who do not really need to be in custody, but would be better in diversion or in other initiatives through the courts, he said.
A study by Treanor Architects, HOK Architects and CGL Companies in 2016 recommended separating the adult and juvenile populations into separate buildings.
In 2016, the study’s predictions were that the adult jail population would grow to 847 adults by 2045, while the juvenile jail population would decline to 33.
Overcrowding in the adult jail has been a concern.
Ash began double-bunking in cells and was able to save funds by bringing inmates home from other jails. Currently there are 75 to 80 inmates “farmed out” to jails in other counties, he said, and these might be brought home in the future if the staffing is available.
Currently the jail has the capacity to house up to 550 to 600 inmates, he said, and there are now a little under 500 there.
The juvenile facility is capped at 48 by the state, Ash said, and the new facility’s limit will be 40. There were about 25 juveniles in the detention facility today, he added. The number fluctuates and is usually around 25 to the high 20s.
According to the UG, the new juvenile facility will have features that are safer for transporting juveniles to court than the current building.
Sheriff Ash said the new juvenile facility will be more secure, designed for juveniles, trauma informed, and more conducive to learning.
Cost overruns affect the building project
The site for the new juvenile center is a former parking lot. Another parking lot now is under construction west of Memorial Hall as part of this expansion project.
The former parking lot west of the court services building had some problems that were discovered while they were doing preparatory work, officials said. There were some issues with the substrate, where the foundation is, at the juvenile center site, according to Mayor Alvey.
“What we’ve done is we have to delay finishing out some of the courtrooms for a while,” Alvey said. “We were trying to keep it within the budget.”
Also affecting cost overruns of the project were tariffs that were affecting steel prices, he said.
“We’ve had to make adjustments to what the building looks like,” Alvey said.
Scott Mead, project manager at Newkirk Novak Construction, said there is an option, before they are finished, to add all that back into the project. All the classrooms and projects are remaining in the project, according to Mead.
At a UG meeting on June 29, cost overruns were discussed, and were said to be at $28.9 million. The project was originally budgeted for $24.8 million, and went up to $27.5 million after that.
Mayor Alvey said the cost of the project has been brought back down to the $27 million range now.
Mead said they kept the exterior, the structure and the layout the same. But there will be a few rooms that are shells currently with just concrete flooring. These rooms can always be added back into the project and finished at any point, whether now or 10 years later, he said.
“It’s more about the pace with which it’s completed,” Mayor Alvey said. “We’ll have all the we need, then we’ll open up the courtrooms as well.”
Attorney: Not what they expected
Attorney Mike Nichols, who represents juveniles, was concerned about the new facility not being connected to any courtrooms. He said he preferred to represent juveniles in face-to-face settings in a room with a judge, not by video conference.
“This thing was sold to the public as a juvenile justice facility; a one stop shop for juvenile detention, court and programs to help keep kids from re-offending,” Nichols stated. “Now, it’s my understanding that the UG is only going to complete the detention facility and the space that was supposed to be used for court and programs is going to be left unfinished until they find money in the budget to finish it.
“Currently, the juvenile court is in the old federal courthouse and the kids have to be transported there in a van for hearings. After the tragedy this summer, the Sheriff’s Department is understandably concerned about transporting people like that and is trying to limit it as much as possible. The problem is that court is now often being conducted via video conferencing and I don’t think that’s appropriate except in extraordinary circumstances. So I have a lot of concerns about them building a new facility that is not connected to any courtrooms where these issues are only going to get worse,” Nichols stated.
See earlier stories at:
https://wyandotteonline.com/cost-overrun-reported-for-juvenile-justice-building/
https://wyandotteonline.com/new-juvenile-detention-facility-moves-ahead/
