Concerns over conditions at the Grand Traverse County Jail are mounting, with an engineer telling county commissioners Wednesday they should be “seriously considering” moving to a new facility in the next three to five years. Commissioners approved a professional services agreement with Plante Moran Realpoint to analyze the county’s space needs for multiple departments and plan for the future of locations including the new jail, the Governmental Center, the Law Enforcement Complex, and the LaFranier campus.

Stress fractures emerged in the jail lobby floor last summer, requiring a temporary closure and a $110,000 contract for a firm to evaluate the building and underlying property. The building has shifted multiple times since then, according to County Deputy Director of Facilities Chris Comeaux. Those movements are slight – under a millimeter – and typically settle or heal themselves. But the aging facility is “costing us a lot of money,” Comeaux said. “It continues to move. Eventually over time, it’s going to continue to deteriorate.”

The first round of studies didn’t offer a “concise answer” on why those shifts are happening, Comeaux said, so monitoring continued and now includes ground-penetrating radar, evaluation of water tables, and crack gauges. The age of the facility combined with fluctuating soil conditions underground are the likely cause of the movements, Pat Machin of Machin Engineering said. He explained that the main structure of the building is intact and hasn’t cracked.

“All of the portions that have moved are the partitions, so those are the walls that are in between the columns and the beams between the floor and the ceiling,” he said. “In these areas, we have seen recurring movement in those cracks.”

Comeaux and Machin used various analogies to describe the situation as “middle of the road” in seriousness. The jail is a “yellow” on a green/yellow/red scale, Comeaux said, or a 5 out of 10 – where 1 is a jail in perfect condition and 10 is a facility that must be immediately evacuated. Machin said he expected to see continued movement in the building now that “something has become overstressed.” While he did not believe there was an imminent safety risk, in a “three-to-five-year period I’d be seriously considering getting into a newer facility,” he said.

That is likely a tight timeframe given the time and cost involved in constructing a new jail, even one that’s been long discussed by the county. Vice Chair TJ Andrews asked if the jail had a contingency plan if the deterioration accelerates or an immediate safety risk emerges. “If we had to do a full evacuation, we can do it,” replied Sheriff Mike Shea. “However, I would much rather be in control of the timeframe…we have a very sensitive population, we know. That includes our staff, and their safety is first and foremost.”

Comeaux noted the building movements do pose current “operational hardships,” because the fluctuations mean doors sometimes open or close when they’re not supposed to. He worried about a door becoming pinched close and not being able to get an inmate out, for instance. “We are safe right now, but there is an urgency to this situation,” he said.

Monitoring is planned to continue at the jail while commissioners plan for a new facility. Officials could decide in the next year to make some type of investment to prolong the jail’s longevity if needed until a new one is built. Commissioners already unanimously approved a resolution of support last April to pursue the construction of a new jail. That’s now envisioned to be part of a larger justice facility that could also include the courts, the prosecutor’s office, the Grand Traverse Sheriff’s Office, the Traverse City Police Department, and the Michigan State Police.

The county has agreements in place with two firms right now for planning. The first, approved by the board in January, is for GFC International for $195,000 to lead the public engagement and planning process specifically for the new jail/justice center. Two justice facility advisory groups made up of community stakeholders are also providing input on various project elements. A second agreement approved by commissioners Wednesday with Plante Moran Realpoint for $190,000 is to analyze space needs for all county departments and provide scenarios for the best utilization of county properties, including the Governmental Center/Boardman Avenue campus, the Law Enforcement Center on Woodmere, and the LaFranier campus. The location of the new jail/justice center would be included in those scenarios.

Tori Manix of Plante Moran Realpoint said the goal is to have a “wider lens on how all of these puzzle pieces fit together, and one of those puzzle pieces is certainly the future of the jail.” The firm will build on work previously done by TowerPinkster to analyze the condition of various county and city properties so that it isn’t “reinventing the wheel on some of those pieces,” Manix said. County commissioners were dissatisfied with the TowerPinkster report, primarily because Andrews said the views of the board weren’t solicited or embedded in the final product.

Commissioners aim to remedy that this time around by being more proactively engaged throughout the process. They voted Wednesday to receive monthly progress reports and to have the joint county-city building committee for the Governmental Center act as a liaison to Plante Moran Realpoint. The firm’s representatives said a more laborious process upfront to have all voices involved would be time-consuming but also create a better final product. A report could be ready as soon as July, the firm said.