by Sean McManus
Staff Writer
In the summer of 1998, Mayor John Delaney appointed a 10-person special committee to study the stretch of East Bay Street from the City Hall Annex to Market Street, which was known as government row.
The mission then, like now, was to continue a policy of getting government buildings off the river and quietly onto less lucrative property. Gone were the days of the old wooden warehouses that dotted the St. Johns River during the shipbuilding boom of World War II. In their wake were the prospects of new high-end condos with boat docks and office parks.
At that time, City Hall had moved to the St. James Building, the Daniel Building was given to the Adam’s Mark Hotel and then-Deputy Chief Administrative Officer Sam Mousa was quoted as saying that whatever happens with a new courthouse complex, it would stay “within two to three blocks” from the current location, so as to stay close to the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office and Duval County Jail.
But like property values on the waterfront in Jacksonville, things change. The new courthouse is slated to be built about 10 blocks from the sheriff’s office and the jail, and with The Shipyards development moving ahead with million dollar condos next door to the former government row, people are starting to politely ask whether it would be possible to move the jail — again.
The John E. Goode Pretrial Detention Facility, the jail’s official name, with its beveled edges and panoramic views of downtown Jacksonville, has a capacity of about 2,189 inmates. That’s a number that is growing increasingly tight for one of the fastest growing cities in Florida. Built in 1991 during a time when the county’s overcrowded jail system was being monitored under federal court order, the new jail wasn’t supposed to reach capacity until well into the next millennium.
When it was built, the jail was the fifth largest in the country. Perched directly behind police headquarters on a flag-lined justice center reminiscent of Washington, D.C., the multi-million dollar jail offers the kind of security for neighboring residents — Berkman Plaza and the soon-to-be Shipyards — that is second only to that of actual inmates.
“How would you like to live next door to 1,500 police officers?” asked the City’s General Council Rick Mullaney, who was not joking. He cautioned that moving the jail would not only be a major expense but would also present serious security issues. While moving the county courthouse doesn’t impact the way prisoners are transported (moving a prisoner half a block or half a mile is essentially the same), Mullaney said moving the jail away from the police headquarters would raise new concerns.
Ham Traylor, who is president of TriLegacy, the group developing The Shipyards, spends at least some of his time driving potential tenants around in a sport utility vehicle to show off the spot designated for their new luxury condo. Traylor said often he and other TriLegacy executives tout the safety that comes with living so close to a jail.
“Sure, best case scenario it would move,” said Traylor. “But I’d like to look like Brad Pitt, too.”
According to Traylor, throughout the ongoing negotiations between the City and the Jacksonville Economic Development Commission, moving the jail was never discussed.
“We knew it was a major investment by the City and that it probably wouldn’t be an option to move it,” he said. “So we made arrangements to put most of the residential condos facing the river and the offices facing the jail on the northern side.”
Traylor said the architecture of the jail doesn’t make it beautiful but doesn’t make it ugly either.
“A lot of people ask me what it is,” said Traylor. “Nobody seems that turned off.”
Calling the jail a “monolith,” but saying that it’s not that bad, Traylor and Jeff Spence, the chief executive of TriLegacy, think that if the jail was going to stay for the next 25 years, it would be a problem.
“But there’s a natural lifespan to that thing and it will have to go eventually,” said Traylor, adding that interest in The Shipyards continues to escalate, regardless of the jail.
“They came to that spot knowing what the deal was,” said mayoral candidate Mike Weinstein, who was executive director of the JEDC when the Spence family was in preliminary negotiations over the site for the Shipyards. “The whole area, including Maxwell House, isn’t really ideal, but it doesn’t seem to be discouraging anyone.”
According to Weinstein and others, there is talk of converting the Maxwell House coffee factory into a museum and a cafe. But Weinstein said there are too many other priorities before the City should consider moving the jail.
“Legally speaking, it would be like building your house next door to an airport,” said Weinstein. “If you know it’s there, then you live with it.”
In 1991, when the City finally agreed to spend over $68 million on the construction of the new pretrial detention facility, jail sweeps were common. Overcrowding was so bad in the old jail that every afternoon, what Weinstein called “the least of the worst” were released onto the street.
“Hopefully, we’ll never get near that point again,” said Weinstein. “But if we do, then we’ll talk about moving the jail. It’s just not that bad looking.”
“The fact of the matter is that in all probability, we will need a new facility this decade,” said Harry Reagan, spokesman for the JSO. “The old jail is where Berkman Plaza is now and it turns out the new jail isn’t as far off the river as it should be. But nobody had any way of knowing that.”
And Reagan said the momentum for building justice facilities adjacent to each other has lost steam since the decision was made to move the courthouse west toward LaVilla.
“Every thing is different now,” said mayoral candidate Tommy Hazouri, who recalls how extreme the prison problem was in Jacksonville when the new jail was built. “Yes, it was a mistake to build a jail that close to the river but everybody makes mistakes and we can’t keep spending tens of millions of dollars to fix them.”
Asked whether it might make sense to move the jail closer to the new county courthouse, Hazouri said it’s crazy to keep building facilities like that in the heart of downtown.
“I think eventually the goal would be to get all of those public buildings somewhere else,” he said. “It’s just not a priority right now. This city is not just for wealthy people.”
John Rutherford, who is the director of corrections for the JSO and a candidate for sheriff, said he’s heard some talk about the possibility of attaching a limited-stay facility to the new courthouse.
“This is certainly not anything that’s even on the table, but I have heard some people say that it might make sense to have a 48-hour facility that could fit 200 or 300 people,” he said. “Theoretically, it could be used until the prisoners were released or at least until they had their first hearing.”
That kind of facility, according to Rutherford, could be used in lieu of a pretrial detention center. And the jail, then, could be placed anywhere.
Rutherford said the sheriff’s office transports about 400 prisoners per day back and fourth from the courthouse to the jail. And he said that if there is anywhere between a 3-4 percent increase in the number of people moving to Jacksonville every year, then the jail will reach capacity within the next 8-10 years.
But Rutherford said it’s not only the jail. “
You could say the same thing about the Sulzbacher Center,” he said. “It’s obvious that this stuff is not in the optimal place, but it’s not that easy to just move the city around.”
Because there is also some talk of dropping the elevated ramp of the Hart Bridge Expressway to make it easier to enter downtown, Rutherford said, maybe moving a jail isn’t that big of a deal.
“Maybe we can just plant ivy on it,” said City Council member Jim Overton. “Or do something to make it less of an eye sore. In reality, that jail was horrendously expensive to build and so when it’s time to retire it, we will. Until then, we’ve got to live with it.”
TirLegacy’s Traylor also weighed in on the idea to beautify the jail.
“The problem with that is one man’s mural is another man’s ‘Oh my God!,’ ” he said.
But Overton said that the City is always open to deals with the private sector, if there are people who just can’t live with it.
“If a downtown developer wanted to make an offer to pay to move it then I’d listen,” he said. “A deal’s a deal.”