Design work on a new jail and

courthouse complex for Fayette County is complete and bids are currently

being received from construction firms that want to do the job.

A formal bid opening is set

for Tuesday, March 27 at 2 p.m. in the commission chambers at the County

Administrative Complex.

The county's engineering firm,

Mallett and Associates, and the Ingram Parris Group, architects for the

judicial complex project, will evaluate the bids before the County Commission

votes to award the contract, possibly as early as April 12.

Officials are hoping for ground

breaking by May, with completion two years away. Meanwhile, overcrowded

conditions at the existing jail are being relieved by a contract with

Union City's oversized facility. Fayette is paying $45 a day to house

prisoners there.

Commissioners recently met

with the architects and engineers to go over the plans one last time before

the project was put up for bid. Estimated cost for the jail and courthouse,

including renovating the old courthouse for use as a sheriff's office,

is $55 million.

Jim Ingram of Ingram Parris

Group, design architects for the project, presented floor plans and color

renderings in an informal meeting with commissioners.

Architects and consultants

met with all the senior officials involved and resolved most of their

concerns during the preliminary design phase, he said. Only minor changes

were included in the final design.

The plans Ingram presented

show six new jail pods, each with space for 64 inmates, and each easily

divided into spaces of 40 and 24, in case there's a need to separate small

groups from the main prison body, such as females or violent criminals.

Security is paramount in the

design, he said. "Minimizing inmate movement is central to it,"

he said. "If the inmates generally stay put, it's a more efficient

facility to operate, and it's more secure," he added.

Inmates will eat, sleep and

get some outside recreation time without having to move about in areas

other than their living units, he said. And they'll travel in tunnels

from jail to the new courthouse for trials. Separate elevators will take

them to holding areas next to the courtrooms, with the general public

using a different set of elevators and judges using a third set.

The three-story courthouse

will have an open atrium, with offices for security officers right next

to the main entrance.

Along with facilities for the

clerk of court, two Magistrate Courtrooms will be on the first floor.

Two identical Superior Courtrooms and two State Courtrooms will occupy

much of the second floor, along with a 200-seat jury selection room and

a grand jury meeting suite.

Courtrooms will have extra

room at the back for media coverage, and one courtroom may be set up with

extra space for particularly high-profile cases, said Ingram.

All entrances will have panic

locks and will be monitored by closed circuit television, he added.