MADISON, Wis. — In March, the Dane County Sheriff broke ground on the Dane County Jail Consolidation Project.
“I am excited to stand here to celebrate this special moment in the history of Dane County,” said Dane County Sheriff Kalvin Barrett.
It was a moment that kicked off the construction of the most expensive project in Dane County history. The project will cost over $207 million dollars and will fund the building of a six-story building with an 825-bed tower.
Barrett said you can’t put a price on the health of your community members.
“We are all one wrong decision away from ending up incarcerated,” said Barrett. “How would you want your mom or your sister to be treated if they were incarcerated?”
Miron Construction was the only general contractor to bid on the project.
Gerald David is the project superintendent. He said his crew is currently working to build the tower in the back parking lot of the Public Safety building.
“We are out on sight, working on the new tower for the jail. What you see in the background is our trade partner. They are demoing the last of the retaining walls in the foundations in the vault that’s here,” said David.
David said his team is currently working to build a platform so they can bring in a tower crane.
“Once we have the tower crane up, we are going to start building the new building,” said David. “Pretty loud around here and it will be this way for a couple more weeks.”
David said most people think of manual labor when they hear about a construction project, but he said there is a lot of work that happens behind the scenes to make sure projects stay on schedule.
“We have an overall schedule and we take that overall schedule and we put a milestone up here. The red stickers are milestones,” said David, pointing to a schedule board filled with sticky note tasks.
At the beginning of the project, David said there are only a handful of workers. As things progress, he said there will be a couple hundred employees.
The projected completion date of the project is June 2027. David said there are always unforeseen obstacles that can get in the way of that completion date.
“Just bringing in a truck with a crane to this project is a challenge,” said David. “You could end up in traffic jams that will throw you off by half a day, excavation into an area that has not been dug up for maybe hundreds of years, you don’t know what’s down there.”
David said when his team runs into obstacles, they do everything they can to keep the project on track.
Barrett said he has confidence in David and his team.
While the sheriff said he feels the jail will be a much-needed addition to the community, he worries that the size of the building will be an issue.
“Dane County is a fast and growing community and I don’t see our jail capacity decreasing anytime due to societal factors that we have not yet found solutions to,” said Barrett.
He said the original agreement had 902 beds and an extra floor. He said in order for the jail to operate at its full potential, it should never be at more than 80% capacity.
“Operating at that 80% of 825 beds, which we are going to be getting is 660 beds,” said Barrett. “On Monday we had 641 residents in the jail so if we opened the new building today, we would be close to maximum capacity.”