(Seguin) — The Guadalupe County Sheriff’s Office is on its way to getting that extra elbow room. Guadalupe County Commissioners recently approved The Koehler Company as its general contractor for the expansion project at the adult detention, law enforcement center.
Judge Kutscher says after two years, the county is excited about finally breaking ground on the expansion project in the next few weeks if not sooner. He says the county is confident in not only the contractor but the overall base bid of $4.3 million.
“We’ve been talking about the law enforcement center expansion projects for right over two years now. A lot of times when we plan for construction projects at the county, it is at least a couple of year process because we talk about the needs, feasibility studies, what plans may look like, projected expenses and costs and then get with an architect to design and then we go out for bids. We finally got to the bidding process after we designed the building and had seven contractors come out and we talked about that also in court how having a process like we’ve had with the bids — having seven contractors come out and bid very tightly, lends a lot of credibility to the process because we know there’s good value in the contractor that we selected and the price that we got because there were five contractors that bid all very close to each other so it really was a competitive process,” said Kutscher.
Kutscher say the base bid also allows the opportunity for the county to grow the project if necessary.
“The base bid was $4,350,000 approximately. There was one ad alternate that was $60,000 for some additional expansion office space upstairs that can be decided. It was bid as an ad alternate so if the county can decide when we get into the construction project and we think we will need those offices the next couple of years, let’s just go ahead and add them now for $60,000 as opposed to having to come back and spend $150,000 to add them two years from now or whatever that price may be,” said Kutscher.
Kutscher says although the plan has been two years in the works, he is finally glad that the project will finally become a reality. He says it not only takes care of today’s needs but also addresses future growth.
“The project is an expansion project out at the sheriff’s office, the law enforcement center that is attached to the jail. This is not an expansion to the jail but rather the law enforcement administration office space. It would take place and is going to built on the footprint on the north side of the building that will fill in an open spot that is a parking lot now. It is approximately a 20,000 square foot expansion, two-stories, that would house the sheriff’s office, a new lobby, administration offices and space, a new training room, a new evidence room, inventory and in-take area. You would have a space for patrol deputies, some locker rooms and office space there for deputies to do their reports and then upstairs also, besides the training room, you will have a new dispatch center where we will have all our new radio and communication equipment with the new radio system that is going to be put in place but also on the second floor, there will be additional space that will be available for long-term build out and expansion so we are trying to think for the future and be responsible to give us that ability to have additional space under roof where we can utilize in the future,” said Kutscher.
The addition will be built on the north end of the current jail and sheriff’s office located at 2615 N. Guadalupe St. The project is expected to help accommodate the county’s growth over the next 20 to 30 years.