The Spokane County Sheriff's Office says it has made draft master plan updates that would trim 592 inmate beds and $66 million off previous size and cost estimates for a detention-services project designed to meet its needs over the next 25 years.

Sheriff's Office representatives were scheduled to present the revised master plan to Spokane County Commissioners this week for consideration and possible action.

The estimated cost for the project now is $199 million, whittled down from an estimated $265 million in 2008 and $229 million in 2009. The current project cost estimate includes about $82 million for construction of a new Spokane County Detention Center, plus ancillary facilities, on the West Plains to replace the current, antiquated Geiger Corrections Center there, data released by the Sheriff's Office show. That $82 million figure also includes about $9.7 million in anticipated demolition costs and relocation expenses.

Separately, the proposed project includes $30.5 million for modernization of and the construction of additional space next to the current six-floor Spokane County Jail, located on the county campus west of Monroe Street and north of the Spokane River, and $13.7 million for a planned Community Corrections Center there. Project soft costs, such as architectural and engineering fees, taxes, and other miscellaneous expenses, account for the other roughly $73 million of the overall cost estimate.

The project would give the county system a total of 1,406 inmate beds, down from 1,998 proposed in the original detention-services master plan. By comparison, the Spokane County Jail, built to accommodate about 460 inmates, currently is overcrowded with more than 650 inmates, and Geiger currently has about 156 inmates, the Sheriff's Office says. It's able to house more than 500 inmates, but only certain low-security offenders are eligible to be placed there.

A bond measure to pay for the construction project previously was expected to be put before voters in April, but the Sheriff's Office said earlier this week that it would seek to push that date back to August to allow more time to educate the public about the details of the revised master plan and to present their arguments for why the big capital expenditures are needed.

"This project comes down to safety and our ability to deal with things," including chronic offenders who bog down the criminal-justice system and could be dealt with more effectively, says Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich.

Knezovich and other supporters of the project, including County Commissioner Mark Richard, who has been involved extensively in the master-planning effort, say they know that convincing the public to approve such a large bond measure—even though the scope of the project has been scaled back—will be a challenge. That's particularly true, they acknowledge, at a time of such economic weakness.

"This has been a tough soul-searching thing for us. Obviously this is not a political winner," Richard says. But, in some respects, he says, "It's never the right time, honestly, to build a new jail," and he and Knezovich say that current county detention facilities have been overcrowded since the mid-1990s, despite a temporary decline in the inmate population last year.

A key component of the project would be providing a permanent home for what's called the Community Corrections Center, which would be a supervised community re-entry facility that would offer a program-based alternative to jail.

The Sheriff's Office says it would provide a "step-down" from jail for sentenced inmates, and also could serve as a direct sanction or diversion option for the courts. Inmates residing at the center could work at regular jobs, then return there to attend treatment programs and sleep.

The goal of the facility, which got under way here with a 2009 pilot program and since then has shown good results, would be to provide lower-cost alternatives to jail, improved outcomes, added jail-management flexibility, and more options for judges.

It seeks to reduce recidivism through programs such as drug and alcohol treatment, high school education completion, moral recognition therapy, parenting and life skills education, and work-search programs.

The 192-bed Community Corrections Center would occupy a new 55,000-square-foot building that would be constructed north of the current jail, on the south side of Gardner Avenue east of Jefferson Street.

In between it and the current jail, a 56,000-square-foot, 128-bed building would be constructed that would connect to the jail and would house functions such as central intake and release, and pre-arraignment and pre-classification housing for inmates.

Development of those structures north of the courthouse would require relocation of the county's Department of Emergency Management, which currently occupies a building there, to a former Wilbert Vault Co. property north of the county campus that the county now owns. Functions associated with a nearby sheriff's garage also would be moved there, and the building that currently is used for the garage would be retained and used for the sheriff's tactical services and vehicles.

The largest other portion of the capital project on the county campus would involve remodeling the current jail and returning it to its original 462-bed design capacity. The high-rise structure was retrofitted in 1990 to accommodate increased inmate populations, but Knezovich says it remains overcrowded.

A new Spokane County Detention Center developed on the West Plains would house the bulk of what the county detention-services program requires, including administration, general housing, a medical infirmary, and kitchen and laundry services, among others.

It would be located on a 40-acre site southwest of the Medical Lake-Interstate 90 interchange, on the north side of White Road. As envisioned, it would include a 226,000-square-foot main complex and a separate, 16,000-square foot warehouse and vehicle center. The main complex would include two 256-bed housing pods plus a 112-bed medical and mental-health housing pod, for a total of 752 new jail beds between the two sites.

A conceptual site plan shows the potential for four more 256-bed pods, plus additional support space, to be added later to the west of the main complex.

Sheriff's Lt. Michael W. Sparber, detention services project manager, says a key point of emphasis for the Sheriff's Office is that the project "is more than just bricks and mortar. It's a comprehensive approach" and a restructuring of how offenders are handled, in the hope that they won't re-offend once released.

The facility is needed primarily to replace the Geiger Corrections Center, an aging World War II-era military barracks that wasn't designed to be a jail, Sheriff's Office representatives say. Knezovich says bluntly that Geiger is unsafe, and he warns that its poor condition and physical layout creates increased risk for both staff and inmates.

Additionally, the facility is on Spokane International Airport property, and the Spokane Airport Board has indicated it wants the Sheriff's Office to vacate the property when the county's lease there expires in 2013. The proposed detention-services project is expected to take 40 months to build, but the Airport Board has said it will continue extending the lease on a yearly basis as long as there's progress toward building a replacement for Geiger.