Work is well under way on a sturdy old building near the KanawhaCounty Courthouse that will become the new home of the sheriff'sdepartment and prosecutor's office.
Project 301, which has been tagged as such because it is locatedat 301 Virginia St., is the $6.5 million endeavor to give the twostaffs more space and better security and save the county money inthe long run.
There actually are two buildings on the site, the former AmericaElectric Power main building built in 1939, which is being calledAlpha, and the parking garage, Bravo. There are plans to join thetwo with an enclosed catwalk.
The prosecutor's office currently is in rental space at GearyPlaza that costs the county $100,000 a year.
The sheriff's department is housed on the second floor of thecounty courthouse.
Safety is a concern at both offices. When suspects are arrested,deputies removed them from cruisers in an open parking lot next tothe courthouse and walk them through public doors and down a longhallway and then take them upstairs in a small elevator. All ofthese spaces are used by the public.
The new building will be much more secure, Chief Deputy JohnnyRutherford said. There will be a bay with remote-controlled garagedoors and room for up to four police cars. Once the cars are insidethe garage, the public will have no contact with anyone inside.
A communication room directly off that space will havebulletproof windows, as well as equipment that will allow countyworkers to communicate and monitor cameras at the courthouse, thejudicial annex and the building being renovated.
"This whole facility is a tool to keep all the citizens ofKanawha County safer," Prosecutor Mark Plants said. "It will helpour sheriff do his job better."
All booking will be done within feet of the cruiser, Rutherfordsaid. There will be a booking room with a holding facility.
Kanawha County Commission President Kent Carper said heanticipates the new booking facilities eventually to be used byother police departments around the county.
"We're willing, if they ask, to allow other agencies to do theirbooking here," Carper said.
County officials say the new building and its layout should besafer for everyone.
"We watch out for the safety of the deputies, the public and theinmates," Rutherford said.
The building also will include a squad room, which Rutherfordsaid is a huge improvement over the current criminal investigationroom.
The current space in the courthouse is used as an investigationroom, a mailroom, a place to examine evidence. At times the table iscleared off and it becomes the lunch room.
"This is history," Rutherford said of the features in thebuilding being revamped. "This is exciting for us; we've never hadany of this stuff."
The building also will have a full kitchen, which is next to atraining room for 30 people with internet connections. The currenttraining room is being used for office space and had room for only12 people when it was used for training.
"Just to be able to put 30 people in one room and be able to talkto everybody (is huge)," Plants said.
A driving and shooting simulation room will be next to thetraining room.
A central vehicle bay is being built for the county's specializedequipment, such as a meth lab truck or a boat.
Lt. Bryan Stover said the county has seven special units, plus aboat, that are scattered from Yeager Airport to Dunbar.
The new bay will allow all of those vehicles to be stored inside,in a protected, climate-controlled environment.
"The response time will be much quicker to get the special unitsto the scene," Stover said.
A new workout space, which Rutherford said has the deputies veryexcited, is being constructed on the second floor of the Bravobuilding. Right now, deputies must find their own space, on theirown time, to work out.
Now, with money from the pistol permit fund, there will be afully equipped gym, with showers and locker rooms for men and women.
The gym will be accessible at all hours of the day to thoseissued passcards.
A state-of-the-art, secure evidence room is also being built. Itis more than double the size of the current evidence room, which iscrammed with material. Staff members must search through piles tofind what is needed.
"It's like a police flea market right now," Carper said. "If youdon't have adequate space and technology, how would you not end upmishandling something?"
As it is now, the evidence lockers are in the middle of a lobby.The evidence is put in the locker and then someone else opens thelocker and transports it to the evidence room. Plants said that canraise questions.
Once the new room is complete, a deputy will put evidence in alocker and it will be passed through to the other side to someone inthe evidence room and never leave.
Plants said the new room, which is right across a catwalk fromhis office, will make it easier for his attorneys and defenseattorneys to check out the evidence.
"Now it's a real pain to have access; we have to jump throughhoops," Plants said. "We'll be able to walk through, sign in, andlook at the evidence together."
Rutherford said a new firearms room is three times the size ofthe current space.
Carper said the county called for more money to be spent in areaslike evidence, instead of building larger, more luxurious offices.
The new evidence and firearms rooms are in the middle of thebuilding and have no windows. There are small ducts for ventilation,with bars over the outside openings.
"This is a fortress," Carper said. "Look at where we put themoney. The offices are small; the evidence rooms are the best."
The room has a separate fire alarm system that will take smoke,fire and heat to activate, and will not use water, so evidence willnot be destroyed.
There will also be a large lab on site, with an area to processcars involved in crimes.
In the main building, conference rooms are plentiful. There arethree large conference rooms and four small ones off the frontreception area.
The second and third floors of the Alpha building will be usedfor office space for the staffs of the prosecutor and sheriff. Eachstaff will get $100,000 to furnish work stations, Carper said.
Plants has 25 attorneys, and each will have an office. There isalso a library on the prosecutor's floor.
On the sheriff's floor are two interview rooms, and there is anadditional interview room in the Bravo building. All the rooms havecameras, which can be monitored over a closed circuit.
Rutherford said he can hardly contain his excitement about thenew space.
"We have room, but for what we need to do, we're really cramped,"he said.
Carper said he would like to see employees start moving in by themiddle of November. He said the work, which is being done by localcontractor BBL-Carlton, is seven months ahead of schedule.
"BBL-Carlton has done a tremendous job," Carper said.
County officials provided these two photos, one taken in 1930 andone snapped recently, to show how little the building on VirginiaStreet has changed.
TOM HINDMAN/DAILY MAIL Detective Richard Ingram, a crime scenetechnician with the Kanawha County Sheriffs Department, has justenough room to move inside an evidence room in the sheriffs office.The department, along with the county prosecutors office, ispreparing for a move down Virginia Street.
Lt. Bryan Stover said deputies will have fewer security problemsin the new sheriffs departments headquarters.
Mike Duff, a sheet metal worker for Rock Branch Mechanical, isbusy with renovations on the buildings second floor.
TOM HINDMAN/DAILY MAIL A curved ramp at the back of the buildingwill be demolished and replaced with a straight version.
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