by Bradley Parsons
Staff Writer
Sheriff John Rutherford is looking forward to the day when his jail is no longer counted as one of downtown’s high-rise residences.
When the John E. Goode Pretrial Detention Facility opened in 1991, the riverfront it overlooked was home to industry, not luxury apartments. But now, as the City attempts to encourage luxury living along the Northbank, Rutherford said the 11-story monolith with the slitted windows is out of place. It’s a drag on the development of the surrounding neighborhoods and is occupying some of the City’s most valuable real estate, he said.
“It’s not so much what the land is worth now, it’s what it will be worth in the future as Berkman (Plaza) adds phase two and The Shipyards starts to go up, that building (the jail) will be taking up probably three square blocks of pretty valuable land,” he said.
Rutherford concedes the jail will probably stay put “in my political lifetime.” But with the building already past capacity and a new county courthouse being built across town, Rutherford said now is the time to start planning for the transition.
The jail, old courthouse and City Hall Annex represent the City’s last stand on the river. Mayor John Peyton has picked up his predecessor’s policy to get valuable waterfront property into the hands of private developers who are expected to create housing, jobs and tax revenue. The courthouse should be gone by late 2007 when its successor is scheduled to open and the City is already considering new ownership for the Annex. The jail was expected to stay open until 2020, said Rutherford. At that point, he hopes the City will look to build elsewhere.
“I hope we never build a high-rise jail again downtown,” he said.
Although a move is at least 15 years away, Rutherford hopes the City will consider it when deciding on its final county courthouse design. Leaving room in those plans for a 48-hour holding facility for pretrial detainees would allow the City to put a new jail just about wherever it wants, he said.
Rutherford’s not sure whether the current plan provides for such a facility.
“It kind of depends which plan you’re looking at. I’ve seen some designs where it looks like there would be enough space for a holding area,” he said. “If we’re looking at building a courthouse for the next 50 years, we may want to consider having the space available.”
The holding facility would eliminate the need to keep the jail close to the courthouse, he said. Inmates could be housed in a rural jail until a couple days before trial, when they would be bused to the courthouse. Plans for the courthouse should be considered in concert with the future needs of the jail, he said. He blamed current overcrowding on a lack of available courtrooms at the current courthouse. The facility is holding more than 3,600 inmates, about 500 past capacity. Rutherford said about 1,600 of those detainees are unsentenced, waiting for access to one of only 22 courtrooms.
Rutherford isn’t the only one who’d like to see the jail moved. An advocacy group representing the adjacent Cathedral District neighborhood asked the City to consider including a detention facility in the new courthouse. The Cathedral Foundation told Peyton in a letter that the specter of an 11-story jail represented, “a major impediment” to development. According to the letter, released prisoners take an aggressive approach to panhandling that makes the residents nervous.