Jail designs slowly nearing completion

By CHARLES W. JOHNSON / Staff Reporter for the Southern Standard

Jail architect Jim Armstrong shows commissioners large-scale renderings of current drawings during the November meeting of the Warren County Commission. (Charles W. Johnson photo)

Plans for the Warren County Jail addition continue to move forward with input from the Jail Oversight Committee and Sheriff Jackie Matheny being instrumental in shaping the jail’s evolving design. Jail architect Jim Armstrong was on hand to present several large full-color renderings of the latest plans at the recent monthly meeting of the Warren County Commission.

Jail Oversight Committee Chairman Herschel Wells introduced Armstrong after a short report on the committee’s activities.

Armstrong started the talk out on a humorous note with a description of the pointer Wells had loaned him for the presentation.

“Let me start out by saying Herschel gave me this pointer, and it’s an antenna off somebody’s car,” Armstrong said, amid general laughter. “So everybody check their car when they go outside.”

Armstrong then described the overall plan shown on the first drawing, including both the modified original building and the addition, as well as the parking and recreation areas.

“What we have done, and you’ll see on the floor plans, we’ve added space and we have 306 inmates calculated,” he said. “We have segregated the visitor parking and the staff parking.

“We are proposing to the National Guard to construct an access road down the back that would be limited to staff and official traffic, not public traffic,” he added.

Armstrong went on to show commissioners the proposed location of the drive-thru sallyport, and noted some other changes.

“We’ve relocated the helicopter pads,” he said, indicating the new locations where the county-owned aircraft would be placed in relation to the jail.

“We’ve fenced in an area for an impound yard at the rear of the property,” Armstrong said.

He went on to explain some of the other plans shown on the drawings for the grounds surrounding the jail.

“The dark green areas are the female exercise yard, and here is the male exercise yard, so they are segregated,” he said. “The light green area is an evacuation yard. In case of disaster, it gets people away from the building.”

Armstrong moved on to more detailed renderings of the interior plans, giving commissioners a thorough overview of the facility and the location of the various areas necessary to the operation of a modern day jail, such as the laundry, kitchen, medical facilities, electrical and plumbing access, multi-purpose room, observation areas, the sallyport and the cells themselves.

Armstrong indicated his engineers would be ready to take plans to the Tennessee state fire marshal for approval around the first of December, with a 95 percent complete set of plans ready by Dec. 26.