Jail expansion has started in Kootenai County

Site work has started on a 114-bed, $12.4 million expansion to the Kootenai County Jail in Coeur d’Alene. The project will increase capacity to 441 beds.

Kootenai County is building two jail housing units, but only the larger, 20,000-square-foot units with 114 will be completed at this time. The future 8,000-square unit with 108 beds will remain a shell for the time being, said Kootenai County Sheriff’s Detective Dennis Stinebaugh.

The existing jail was designed to house 327 inmates but typically averages 430 to 440 inmates, reaching as high as 457 inmates on certain holidays, he said.

“We anticipate (the expansion) being near capacity at the time of completion,” Stinebaugh said.

Following three failed bond measures, Kootenai County tapped fund balance money – “a fancy word for savings” – to pay for the first building, Commissioner Chris Fillios said.

“We have not gone there yet,” Fillios said about finishing the second building. “We just don’t know. We’ve have to play it as the figures show us.”

The Sheriff’s Department on average sends 70 to 90 inmates a day to Nez Perce and Bonner counties or to Yakima and Ferry counties in Washington at a typical cost of $4,600 a day, Stinebaugh said.

LCA Architects of Boise designed the expansion underway now, as well as a 200-bed jail expansion for the county in 2001.  LCA is the predominant architect and master planner for intermountain small town jails in Idaho, east of the Cascades in Oregon and Washington and in northern Nevada, said Russ Moorhead, managing partner at LCA and head of its justice group.

LCA has designed more than 35 jail projects in about 15 Idaho counties and several in the surrounding states.

The general contractor is Sletten Construction Co of Las Vegas.