Detention center renovation end date pushed back

CLOVIS — The end date of the Curry County jail renovation and addition project has been pushed back once again.

And it seems Curry County will be expected to foot the bill for 29 additional cameras needed for the renovation, which will likely cost the county several hundred thousand dollars.

During Thursday's County Commission meeting, the commissioners met with representatives from HB Construction and ASA Architects to check on the progress of the renovation and review the plans. The substantial completion date for the project has been moved back to March 18. HB has, however, begun creating punch lists for finished parts of the facility.

The new housing area of the facility is scheduled to be turned over by Feb. 25, pending a state fire marshal inspection. The new booking area should be ready by March 6.

During the meeting, the commission spoke with Robert Price of ASA, who explained the process in which they draw up the construction plans and how the 29 cameras ended up being unaccounted for.

According to Price, ASA based its designs on ad bills provided by the county and that the missing cameras must not have been listed on the documents provided and were therefore missed.

While ASA did inspect the facility during the design process, Price said searching the facility for each and every camera while it was in operation would be something like “an Easter egg hunt” and be too difficult to accomplish.

Price said ASA is working with a specialist to come up with a new estimate for the cameras, but could not present an estimated amount during Thursday's meeting. He expected ASA would obtain a quote sometime by the end of this week.

While no figure has been given, county officials expect the addition to cost several hundred thousand dollars.

Commissioner Chet Spear further questioned Price on how this occurred, asking if ADA had ever had similar problems working on other projects or if he believed the Curry County Adult Detention Center may have been too large of a project.

In addition to the unexpected cost of the new cameras, the construction project has experienced several delays over the last few months, pushing the projects’ finish date from the end of last year all the way to March.

The main source of the delays has been scheduling and passing inspections with the State Fire Marshal's Office according to Levi Wecker of HB Construction.

“The fire marshals have rejected the fire alarms on this project numerous times,” Wecker said. “For new housing for example, the fire marshal only approved it a few months ago after rejections based on numerous changes they kept making to the plans.”

Wecker added that HB couldn't reasonably predict the changes the fire marshal would have them make and often needed to delay stages of the project to accommodate.

Attempts to contact the State Fire Marshal's Office by The News for comment were not immediately returned.

The commissioners voiced frustrations with the progress, as well as skepticism on who the responsibility for the missing cameras will ultimately fall on. The commission is hoping to finish the project and get the new facilities turned over to detention center staff soon to turn their attention toward future projects like the courthouse renovation.

Detention Center Administrator Mark Gallegos said that while he and his staff are eager to get their hands on the new facilities, he is more than willing to wait to make sure the facilities are completed and up to the proper standards.

“I believe it's too early for a punch list. I think that there are a lot of ideas out there, but I'm looking for execution,” Gallegos said. “I've walked through the facility and seen some things, but I don't want to consider going through with a punch list until there's a finished product.”