Polk County Jail Expansion

Construction Start: January 2007
Regional Office: Clearwater Office
Area: 175,252 square feet

Peter R. Brown Construction was selected as Construction Manager for this jail expansion project. The renovations and additions at the Polk County – South County Jail Facility in Frostproof, Florida, include multiple phases of work on an active, occupied campus.
Work is performed in multiple phases in order to construct and interconnect a new site utility infrastructure and building support system to service the new buildings, and provide system upgrades to the existing buildings. All work is performed while maintaining all services to the fully occupied facility.
New construction on campus consists of a 768 bed secure housing addition (111,808sf), remote video visitation building, a new kitchen that serves three meals daily, staff dining, 87 bed infirmary, jail administration area, and the addition of 417 beds to the existing 1008 bed facility. Renovation of the existing housing units include upgrades to the existing HVAC system(s), moving from roof mounted DX units to a chilled water source system.
Building support systems are housed in a new central energy plant that contains a four pipe HVAC system capable of producing 2400 tons of cooling capacity, ten computer controlled and sequenced 375kw bi-fuel (diesel and natural gas)emergency generators that serve as 100% back-up power for over 400,000 sf of operating facility. These units are design to run and provide uninterrupted power to the facility in case of a hurricane or other power interrupting event.

Project Updates

7/24/08 Peter Brown Construction gets approval to proceed with the South County Jail Expansion
County OKs Jail Expansion, New Sheriff's Operation Center By Tom Palmer THE LEDGER Published: Wednesday, July 23, 2008 at 11:31 a.m. Last Modified: Wednesday, July 23, 2008 at 11:39 a.m. BARTOW | County commissioners agreed today to proceed with three public safety construction projects totaling $70.5 million. Two of the projects, the $25.3 million Polk County Sheriff’s Office operations center, communications center and crime scene investigation building and the $3.9 million Emergency Operations Center, will be located at the Public Safety Complex that is part of a county office complex on Winter Lake Road. The third project, the $41.2 million expansion of the South County Jail, is located near Frostproof. The vote was unanimous on the first two projects, but was 4-1 on the jail expansion, with County Commissioner Randy Wilkinson dissenting. Wilkinson contended that expanding the facility would only result in excessive jailing of residents. “I think it’s immoral what we’re doing,’’ he said, citing a study that showed Polk has one of the highest proportional incarceration rates in the United States. But Capt. Gary Hester of the Polk County Sheriff’s Office countered that the study Wilkinson cited is “bogus.” “We don’t apologize for arresting criminals,’’ he said. Commissioner Jack Myers and Clerk of the Courts Richard Weiss pointed out that the money for the jail expansion was covered by an $88 million bond issue the County Commission approved in 2005 for this very purpose. Register Construction & Engineering will be the contractor for the Winter Lake Road projects. Peter R. Brown Construction has been hired to construct the jail expansion. The new Polk County Sheriff’s Office building complex will replace and consolidate facilities located in downtown Bartow and at the Bartow Air Base. The complex will consist of the three-story, 100,193-square-foot operations center, the one-story, 13,303-square-foot communications center and the one-story, 16,000-square-foot crime scene building. All three buildings will be constructed to withstand strong hurricane-force winds. The one-story, 11,594-square-foot Emergency Operations Center will replace the existing center, which is located in a leased office at the Bartow Air Base, which public safety officials say is too small and contains too few facilities for extended operations during a disaster, such as the 2004 hurricanes. The 114,000-square-foot jail expansion will provide room for 768 additional inmates,. In addition, the expansion will involve the construction of a new kitchen, an infirmary and a video visitation facility.