The Lancaster County commissioners are interested in hearing more about a plan to break down the county’s upcoming correctional facility project into a core “base bid” component plus a set of alternate add-ins.
Warden Cheryl Steberger presented the idea Thursday morning at the county’s monthly Prison Board meeting.
In August, county officials and the project’s design team presented a schematic design for a 433,108 square foot prison with 994 beds. The following month, Commissioners Josh Parsons and Ray D’Agostino said they weren’t ready to sign off on that plan, and that they wanted to see some alternatives first.
They and their colleague, Commissioner Alice Yoder, sit on the board along with representatives of the court system, district attorney, sheriff and county controller.
Among the concerns are cost, and the question of “right-sizing” the facility, which is intended to serve the county for decades.
Preliminary estimates suggest the project could cost about $400 million if built as outlined in the August presentation. As for the appropriate size, it depends on demographics, crime trends and court system practices, all of which are subject to increasing uncertainty as planners look farther into the future.
A standard approach
In prepared remarks, Steberger said the base-bid-plus-alternates approach is common in construction bidding. It would not necessitate scrapping the existing schematic design, she and D’Agostino said: Rather, that design would serve as the starting point. It would be fleshed out in full, but certain elements would be designated as optional.
Bidders would then offer a price for the base building and prices for each alternate, allowing the commissioners to assemble an overall plan that best balances cost and features.
“I’m fine with that,” D’Agostino said. Bidding projects that way can help with negotiations and result in lower costs, he said: Companies don’t want to lose the work of building the alternative components, so they’re incentivized to bring them in as low as possible.
The base bid would include the inmate housing units and the ancillary areas needed to support them, and would provide for 986 beds, Steberger said. Most of the space where inmate programs will be held are in the housing units, so those areas remain part of the base bid, along with recreation areas, restrooms and showers.
The areas identified as potential “alternate” components are as follows:
- Housing units for male and female work release;
- Central booking;
- Seven beds in the facility’s wellness center, potentially reducing total bed count from 27 to 20;
- Two “cluster” areas, one each for men and women, designed for larger-scale programs than the individual housing units can accommodate;
- A garage to store maintenance equipment.
Steberger said she did not have estimates for how much each component would contribute to the overall project cost.
President Judge David Ashworth strongly cautioned against making a “penny-wise, pound-foolish” decision. It’s time to move decisively away from the shortcomings of the existing prison, he said, and that means providing adequate space for central booking, work release and inmate programming at the new facility.
“The original plan that was submitted, I support,” he said.
Steberger said she’s uncomfortable at the idea of removing the work release component. It has potential to be developed into a comprehensive reentry program and that would be her preference, she said.
What’s next
The next step is to see in full detail what the base-bid-and-alternatives approach would entail, Parsons said. He directed Steberger and the design team to update the schematic drawings and narrative accordingly and concurred with Yoder that the narrative should lay out the tradeoffs involved in including or omitting the “alternate” elements.
The Rev. Jason Perkowski urged the design team to think through everything carefully. Building a space but not fitting it out probably won’t save much money; spaces in the building’s core will be difficult or impossible to expand later if they’re initially built too small.
The Prison Board plays an advisory role in the construction project. The county commissioners have ultimate authority, as it is they who will vote to approve construction contracts and the issuance of debt to finance the work.
Yoder pointed out that the county is paying its owner’s representative and design team every month, so there’s a cost to extending the review of the schematic design. There would be a cost to making a bad decision, too, Parsons responded, and taking the time now to look at alternatives is appropriate.
The county needs a facility that’s neither too large nor too small, he said, and given the uncertainties of projecting decades into the future, “that’s not an easy question.”
