Consultant describes option for renovating Cuyahoga County jail, but leaves cost estimate, new-jail debate unanswered

CLEVELAND, Ohio – A recent assessment of the Cuyahoga County jail gave the first clear picture of what a renovation could entail, but it did little to move the needle in the debate over whether it’s the better option to building a new facility.

In a presentation, Tuesday, to the Justice Center Executive Steering Committee, Eric Ratts of DLZ Architecture laid out a potential plan for how the county could overhaul the jail to improve conditions, increase bedspace and accommodate some of the county’s ambitions for a rehabilitative care model. But a renovation cannot accomplish every goal on the county’s wish list, he said, and he could not estimate how much it is likely to cost, leaving officials wrestling over the same dilemma of what the county can do versus what it should.

“Do we believe that you can renovate your facility with in-kind materials and systems? Yes, we do,” Ratts said. “Do we believe that you can…bring the building up to code? Yeah, we do. Can you meet the Ohio jail standards in working very diligently with the Ohio Bureau of Detention? Yeah, we believe we can get there.

“There are some compromises,” he warned, “but we believe that you can renovate.”

That said, does DLZ believe the jail can be renovated to provide optimal natural light, maximize efficiency by relocating all programming and services inside the housing units, and meet every one of the other objectives officials have for a new jail?

“It’s not probable,” Ratts told the committee. “It’s just not likely. We don’t believe it’s the best solution.”

For that reason, he said, DLZ had to conclude that building a new jail was the “most reasonable solution.”

But it’s not the only option.

Potential renovation options

Renovating the jail will require an “extraordinary” amount of work, DLZ’s study said. It outlined numerous deficiencies that would have to be addressed if the county planned to stay there, but provided the first roadmap for how it could work.

Some of the renovations are major.

For at least the last decade, the jail has been able to get away with double bunking in single-occupancy cells, but the state will not permit that to continue after a renovation. Expanding the cell size a few feet to meet state standards would require moving walls, which Ratts said would also eliminate some of the cells and reduce the jail’s capacity.

But, if the county builds a central utilities plant to house all mechanical functions for the entire Justice Center complex, it could move HVAC systems and other equipment out of the facility, creating space to reorganize and expand into the basement. This would also make it easier for Public Works staff to perform maintenance outside of the housing units.

There is also a possibility of removing walls and cells to allow more natural light into the day spaces and relocate some – but not all – programming, medical services, or recreation space next to the housing units, Ratts said, but that would also reduce occupancy.

The question was also raised whether the county could renovate the newer Jail II tower, which was built in 1995, and tear down and replace only the 1976-era Jail I tower. The problem with that plan, Ratts said, is that Jail I houses all of the jail’s “core functions,” including intake and booking.

“You’d need to build something, then demolish” to make that plan work, Ratts said. “You just really need Jail I, and Jail I is the one with bigger problems.”

There may be “an opportunity” for the county to move intake and booking services into the current Cleveland Police headquarters, as the department seeks a new home, which might fix the issue, Ratts said. But he couldn’t answer for sure, he said, because he’s not familiar with building plans for the rest of the complex.

That space may also be needed for other expansion, or the county might need to build a supplemental facility elsewhere. Those decisions largely depend on population trends.

The jail is consistently crowded, Ratts said, with an “extraordinarily long” average length of stay. While inmates in Franklin County’s jail stay an average of 36 days, Cuyahoga inmates were staying an average of 156 days, prior to the pandemic, and now average over 200 days.

Common Pleas Administrative Judge Brendan Sheehan pointed to Cuyahoga’s high murder rate in defense, but Ratts said most jails he works with have average stays roughly half ours. The county has put millions of dollars into a Diversion center meant to keep low-level offenders out of the jail and a central booking area to release others on bond sooner, but neither is fully operational.

Cutting costs

Reducing the population would also be key to cost savings because it would shrink the number of beds the county needs to add back into a renovated jail – it currently has a rated capacity of 1,880 but officials have set goals for 1,600 beds or less – and how much it will cost to rehome offenders while the work is underway.

The county currently pays about $100 per day to house an inmate at an outside facility, so if it must move out roughly 300 inmates during each phase of renovation, the county could be looking at a bill of about $11 million a year, Ratts estimated. And because no one facility has an extra 300 beds right now, the inmates would have to be distributed across the state.

The county would also need to update all mechanical systems, install intercom and sprinkler systems throughout, and make showers and other areas accessible to disabled inmates.

Other minor changes could also have a big impact, Ratts said, like repainting walls and installing new furniture to bring more color into the building to “normalize” the space, in keeping with best practices.

Those changes would significantly extend the lifespan of the 46-year-old facility, Ratts said, but without them, he estimated the current jail has only another five to eight years of use. Either way, the county will need to continue making repairs and investing in the building to maintain it until another option is available, he said.

Ratts also questioned the county’s claim that a new jail would improve efficiency and reduce staffing needs, resulting in cost savings of about $9 million per year. Those savings are central to the county’s plan to pay off the debt on the new jail, along with $54 million in sales tax revenue, if the county votes to extend it.

But in his experience, Ratts said new jails “rarely” reduce staffing because officers who were once assigned to housing or transportation are reassigned to other areas, like supporting some of the programming that is added.

Executive Armond Budish denied that scenario, suggesting that cutting staff could produce the desired savings. Because if the county is able to repurpose corrections officers, he said, then a new jail did create efficiencies and “you don’t need the same number of people to do the same thing, and you have a choice: You either repurpose people or you save the funds.”

A new jail has been estimated to cost up to $750 million. Early renovation estimates once ranged between $200-300 million. Ratts could not provide a cost estimate for his proposed renovations, saying that was outside the scope of his work.

How did we get here?

Many of the committee members accused Budish of forcing the county into a costly renovation or rebuild by neglecting to make repairs in the facility even after the 2014 assessment identified $238 million in needs.

Ratts confirmed that “very few of the projects were completed” from that list, contributing to the 2022 cost.

The county’s Public Works Director Michael Dever defended that investments have been made over the years – roughly $12 million in the jail since 2014, he said. Another $24 million has gone into repairs throughout the rest of the Justice Center complex.

But the discussion was ongoing then whether to build a new jail, he said, and the county didn’t want to invest too much in a building it may later abandon. Those repairs also wouldn’t have addressed many of the other deficiencies that the county is trying to solve for now, he said.

Budish backed him, saying putting money into the facility back then would have been deciding to renovate and keep the jail at the Justice Center.

“I wasn’t going to make that decision in 2015 to put $200 million into the Justice Center before we knew our options,” Budish said. “That just would not have made sense.”

The argument could also be made, Prosecutor Michael O’Malley countered, that “by doing nothing you have sealed your fate.”

If you purchase a product or register for an account through one of the links on our site, we may receive compensation.