Rhea Justice Center under budget, on track for end-of-year finish

Move-in date could be as early as January

Staff Photo by Robin Rudd / Commissioner Jim Vincent talks about how the cell blocks and dormitories will be monitored from a central tower. Rhea County Commissioner Jim Vincent gave the Times Free Press a tour of the county's new Justice Center, located at the site of a former hospital.
Staff Photo by Robin Rudd / Commissioner Jim Vincent talks about how the cell blocks and dormitories will be monitored from a central tower. Rhea County Commissioner Jim Vincent gave the Times Free Press a tour of the county's new Justice Center, located at the site of a former hospital.

Officials in Rhea County say the county's new jail and justice center is on schedule and just under budget as it heads for the home stretch in the coming weeks.

Rhea County Commission Chairman Jim Reed, who has been involved since the early planning and as project details were being refined in 2018 and 2019, said he was happy the project is now "getting real close" to completion. Reed and the rest of the commission in early 2019 were still studying bids and funding options, and now it's all nearly done.

"We're looking for 100% completion by the end of December," said Jim Vincent, county commissioner for the 7th District and county building inspector who was hired by the county a little more than a year ago to oversee the county's interests in project.

The new justice center makes use of portions of the old Rhea Medical Center's buildings and campus at the intersection of Walnut Church Grove Road and Rhea County Highway on the north end of Dayton. Parts of the old medical center date back as far as parts of the old jail.

"The budget was something like $23.3 million and we're going to come in $300,000 to $400,000 below that," Vincent said. He said some changes in the project have produced savings to pay for other needed improvements. Budget estimates have fluctuated, once standing as high as $25 million as demolition of the old building got underway and the design was tweaked.

"Another thing that's huge, we've built this thing on schedule with the COVID," he said, "and we shut the project down for a whole month when the COVID got so bad about four or five months ago."

Despite the delay, he said work crews made efforts to catch up.

The new jail and justice center facility replaces the county's aging, overcrowded 87-bed jail and space-limited sheriff's office behind the historic Rhea County Courthouse in downtown Dayton, which dates back to the middle of the last century.

The new justice center will give general sessions, circuit and chancery court operations inside the historic circa-1891 courthouse a modern, safer home, and sheriff's office, jail staff and inmates vastly improved quarters and more space, officials said. It will also include offices for the Tennessee Highway Patrol and state parole and probation officials.

Vincent said other agencies might find homes there, too.

The old county jail was decertified in 2011 for overcrowded conditions and recertified in 2012 under new guidelines created to help counties struggling to meet state standards. In June 2017, with the out-of-date jail packed with more than 200 inmates, state officials ordered the county to reduce its inmate population by 50 percent and to fix its overcrowding problems.

Officials eyed the medical center property and other land for a few years before setting their sights in 2015 on conversion of the old hospital, which offered a building site, adaptable structures and a large parking area. Portions of the old hospital dated back to the 1950s or 1960s.

Rhea County Sheriff Mike Neal said Friday he was pleased with progress and eager to see the finished product.

"Everything's going great as far as I'm concerned," Neal said Friday. "The only bad thing that we've had is basically our COVID problem where we were down for a month to six weeks. That's the only slowdown we've had at all."

Neal said the new justice center will hold all of the county's inmates now scattered all over the state.

(READ MORE: Rhea County Jail begins transferring inmates to reduce overpopulation)

"We're spending close to $1 million a year with housing, transportation and medical costs," Neal said of the financial bleed of toting inmates back and forth to Dayton. The coronavirus also creates issues in the movement of those inmates because problems can crop up while inmates are away, forcing a housing back-up plan and more expense, he said.

"I've got women that are almost in Memphis, and I've got [male] inmates in Bledsoe County and counties in Middle Tennessee," he said. "Every time they have a medical appointment or court, we have to go over and get them and take them back again."

The trip to Memphis is six hours, one way.

Neal said he figured Rhea County was helping Bledsoe County pay for its new addition at the jail in Pikeville.

"I just signed my bill for this month and it was almost $50,000 just for Bledsoe County," he said.

Neal said the burden has kept increasing for nearly two decades.

"I have been dealing with this problem since 2002, when I first got elected," he said. "This is not something that has occurred in the last few years. It has occurred in the last 18 years."

Neal said he understood the new jail for the county had to be addressed after other needs - new schools - were answered first.

The sheriff said if the jail is certified by the state for every bed planned, it will be able to hold 325 inmates, including 275 maximum-security beds for men and women, plus beds for male and female trustees and space for people to serve weekend sentences for DUI and similar charges.

Vincent said as the new justice center project wraps up, officials will start studying ideas on how to use the old jail and the almost-130-year-old courthouse in the middle of downtown Dayton.

(READ MORE: Statue for lawyer in famous Dayton, Tenn., Scopes trial unveiled [photos])

The main courtroom upstairs is where a Dayton school teacher named John T. Scopes was tried in the 1925 "Scopes Trial" on charges of violating a state law called the Butler Act by teaching that human beings evolved from a "lower order of animals."

The courtroom, despite its ongoing use as the county's courtroom for more than a century, has also been the setting for the Scopes Trial Play and Festival held annually to mark the famous face-off between William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow, who defended Scopes. The play in 2020, the 32nd year of the event, was canceled because of COVID-19.

Contact Ben Benton at bbenton@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6569. Follow him on Twitter @BenBenton or at www.facebook.com/benbenton1.

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