North Park OK’d for purchase as jail site by Monroe County commissioners, still needs nod from council

At their regular Wednesday morning meeting, the three Monroe County commissioners approved a $11.375-million purchase agreement for the land where a new county jail and co-located justice complex is now planned to be built.

The property that the commissioners agreed to buy amounts to about 52 acres in North Park, off SR46, south of Hunter Valley Road, which is owned by Steve Crider through Logan Land Development.

In late September, commissioners had put off the North Park land purchase when it emerged that an alternative site, on Vernal Pike, had a feasible solution for getting sewer service, without being annexed into the city of Bloomington.

But the Vernal Pike property proved to have some topographical limitations that commissioners were not willing to accept.

Despite Wednesday’s approval by the county commissioners, the land deal is not yet final, because under state law, the county council also has to approve the purchase of any new significant property, regardless of how it is funded.

The purchase agreement is expected to appear on the Nov. 12 agenda for the county council.

The previous evening, during a joint meeting of the county commissioners and the county council, there appeared to be clear majority sentiment among county councilors that North Park was the best of the options that the county government had considered for a new jail.

Sending his support for North Park to county council president Trent Deckard via text message was councilor Geoff McKim.

Absent from the Tuesday evening meeting were Cheryl Munson and Marty Hawk. Munson is expected to support the purchase. Hawk has previously made clear her opposition to the North Park site, based on its impact on Ellettsville.

Residents of the town of Ellettsville have been vocal in their opposition to the North Park location as a jail.  They think the North Park location serves the function of a gateway to the town of Ellettsville and they don’t think that’s consistent with a jail and justice complex.

Both the Greater Ellettsville Area Chamber of Commerce and the Greater Bloomington Chamber of Commerce championed a different property as an alternative to North Park, located on Vernal Pike. The two chambers sent county government leaders a joint letter of support.

During public comment at Wednesday morning’s meeting, Bloomington resident Joe Davis was the sole voice of dissent. He offered a letter from a group he is representing called Taxpayer Objection Petitioners, that calls for the new jail to be built in downtown Bloomington.

The letter describes as a better location for a jail the county-owned land south of 3rd Street, where the voter operations center is located, across Walnut Street from the downtown transit center.

From the public mic, Davis said about the proposed North Park location: “The public does not want this. The public wants [the new jail] to be downtown, where it has always served the public best.”

Downtown as a potential new jail location was eliminated fairly early on in the process, because the reduced footprint would mean building a multi-story structure. The idea of a multi-story structure with an elevator was also rejected early in the process. The current single elevator in the jail, located at 7th Street and College Avenue in downtown Bloomington, is a frequent source of maintenance issues.

On Wednesday morning, county commissioner Julie Thomas said, “We certainly cannot build a multi-story building for a jail. It has failed miserably, as we’ve seen, and our current building is falling apart around their ears.”

Also on Wednesday morning, commissioners ticked through the other locations that had been considered. The commissioners had previously mulled a location on Fullerton Pike, inside the city limits, but in late 2022, it did not win approval from Bloomington’s city council for the required rezone for the land.

The county council and county commissioners soured on the Thomson PUD property when it became apparent that relocation of a Duke Energy power line and moving a big pile of debris would delay the start of the project.

Even assuming that the county council approves the land deal in the second week of November, the potential completion date for the project could be up to four years away.

That’s based on estimates from Scott Carnegie with DLZ Corporation, the county’s design-build consultant for the jail project. That four-year time frame is based on one year to complete the design, starting from the time the site is selected, and two and a half to three years for construction.

Sheriffs in Indiana are elected and limited to two four-year terms. That means Monroe County sheriff Ruben Marté has a little more than six years left of potential service as the sheriff. He brought that perspective to his remarks at the Tuesday evening joint meeting: “We won’t see that jail. So what I’m saying: It’s not for us. It’s for the next group of people that are going to be working there. So we want to leave them in the situation where they could do the very best that they can.”

The focus at the joint meeting on Tuesday evening was just on the merits of the North Park property compared to the Vernal Pike property. The amount of acreage on the Vernal Pike land that is actually buildable was a big concern. The steep slopes—with greater than a 25-percent gradient—means that there are two chunks of real estate on the Vernal Pike property with 35 acres and 36 acres of buildable land, respectively.

But the two pieces of buildable land are separated by enough distance that transfers between potentially two separate facilities for jail and courts would become a problem to be solved.

One of the virtues of the North Park location that has been cited by county commissioners is that there’s enough land for a single-story jail facility of up to 500 beds, and a justice facility, with additional room to expand in 30 or 40 years, if it’s needed. One of the scenarios that commissioners and councilors alike say they want to avoid is a new jail that has insufficient capacity from the time it opens.

At Wednesday’s meeting, commissioner Julie Thomas summed up the sentiment of her two colleagues, Lee Jones and Penny Githens: “The what-about-ism has to stop, and we need to move forward.”

In 2008, the ACLU filed a lawsuit based the Monroe County jail operates under a settlement agreement that has been extended several times. The current effort towards constructing a new jail, stems from two reports from consultants hired to study the local criminal justice system. The reports were delivered three years ago, in July 2021.

The reports from the two consultants—RJS Justice Services and Inclusivity Strategic Consulting—highlighted a number of challenges in Monroe County’s criminal justice system. The key conclusion from the RJS study, which prompted the start to the recent effort was: “The jail facility is failing and cannot ensure consistent and sustainable provision of constitutional rights of incarcerated persons.”