It's the great department shuffle: County begins office moves, plans to reutilize old jail

Six years ago, the Greene County Commission moved into the northside Cox Medical Tower. Now they look to return to the government campus off Boonville Avenue.

Currently, the commission, the purchasing department and the public administrator are all located on the 10th floor of the tower. The sixth, seventh and eight floors of the tower also house the county's prosecuting attorney offices. While the 10th floor will be vacated, these will remain at the tower.

The Commission created a campus plan last year to renovate and repurpose portions of the county's campus, including the old jail, the historic courthouse and other county facilities. A part of this plan was to move those departments from the 10th floor of the tower back onto the campus.

Commissioner John Russell said this move makes sense in a variety of ways, though the main factor is efficiency.

"I think there are several things that we're looking to do that will better serve citizens and make it easier for them to receive the services that they're coming to the campus to receive," he said.

It also costs the county almost $111,000 a year to rent the 10th floor of the tower — a cost that Russell said is unnecessary and avoidable, though not the main reason for the move.

"As a local government, we would really prefer not to be leasing space where we can not do that," he said.

How did this happen?

The commission, along with the public administrator, first moved into the tower in 2017 under a six-year lease, vacating the county administration building at 933 N. Robberson Ave., according to previous News-Leader reporting. This created space for the Greene County Youth Academy (GCYA). The academy and the public administrator were previously housed in the now demolished Hogan Building, which was deteriorating and would have been costly to repair.

Russell said that the only increases in rent for the tower since move-in have been to adjust for inflation.

As the new jail facility was completed in April last year, the sheriff's office moved to the new facility and opened up more space across five facilities on the campus. Now, this space will be used to expand the judicial facilities and create more office space for other county departments.

What has to happen to allow the move

In order to move out of the medical tower, more space needs to be opened up to allow for the eventual move, creating a domino effect of movements and office openings.

The first domino is about to fall.

At a commission briefing Aug. 28, the commission approved moving forward with a contract to relocate the county's Information Systems Department to the Public Safety Center. The office currently is on the second floor of the historic courthouse. The move will bring more of the department under one roof.

Resource Management Director Kevin Barnes said this is the first step of the plan at large and will open up space for the commission to move into.

Barnes said the work of moving the Information Systems Department should wrap up pretty early next year. In order to open up space for the purchasing department in the historic courthouse, he said the Human Resources Department will be moved to the administration building on Robberson.

"It is really one of the first things that has to happen in order for the other projects to go," he said.

Money source and budget troubles

Taking this first step has not all been smooth sailing. The contract for the move came in about 30% above the estimated cost.

During the meeting, commissioners questioned if waiting for other projects around the county to wrap up could bring the prices down and ultimately save money. While this could be true, this would also mean they could not use American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) money that must be spent by the end of 2026.

"I'm not comfortable with the waiting game, in hopes that our bonds will cover all that we need to get done if we put this out," Commissioner Rusty MacLachlan said at the meeting. "I think we're going to have to dip into ARPA funds to finish this."

Russell supported the contract for this portion of the project despite the higher costs. He said before moving forward with anything else, he would like for the commission to look at it overall and reconsider plans to account for the higher prices.

"I would just ask that we have a discussion about what that might look like, what the different pieces would look like, because if we need to cut something out, I'd rather do it now," he said at the meeting.

The county set the budget for the entire project at $19 million, which at the meeting Barnes said would be hard to not surpass with the current plans. He told the News-Leader the construction challenges have become a norm for everyone across the county, especially with the availability of ARPA funds.

"It's a blessing that funding is available, but it's just there's so much money on the street that everybody's trying to get their projects done in that timeline," he said. "There is a lot of work on the streets, and we're competing for the same labor force and the same materials."

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The individual steps of the entire project will be bid separately rather than all at once. Barnes said he hopes this "bite-size" approach eases some of the burdens that larger projects can bring by reducing the time and size of the workforce contractors need to commit to. This also allows for more flexibility to wait and see if market prices shift for the better.

"It is hard to get projects off the ground and have enough labor and materials to build them," he said. "We have a little hope that that price is coming down as time goes on."

Barnes said some projects are funded by bonds while others, mostly renovations, are using ARPA funds. According to a county news release from 2022, no tax dollars will be used on any of these projects.

Projects funded through ARPA are currently underway and include HVAC improvements in the judicial building and the historic courthouse, fire suppression system updates, window replacement and dome ceiling in the historic courthouse among others.

There is not a definitive timeline for when the 10th floor of the tower will be vacated. Barnes said designs for the old jail updates should be drawn early next year and then a lot more should be clear by March.

Russell said the commission hopes to be back on campus within the next two to three years.

Rest of the plan

The Commission's move is also largely dependent on when other projects can be completed, like moving the information systems and human resources departments. But in a chain reaction, other projects have to be completed before these can vacate the historic courthouse.

A large portion of the plan is the redesign of the old jail space to accommodate family courts and staff from the Greene County Juvenile Office and Youth Academy with the construction of new courthouses and office spaces. This will open up more space in the judicial building, providing necessary courtroom space for an additional new circuit court judge come winter. Part of the plan includes a single-entry secure lobby space through which citizens would be able to access both buildings.

The current family court area in the judicial building will open up room for the public administrator. Greene County's human resources and budget offices would move into the administration building on Robberson, where the commission met prior to the medical tower move and which is currently occupied by the GCYA.

With so many moving parts and unpredictable construction costs, the plans remain fluid, with details yet to be worked out.

This article originally appeared on Springfield News-Leader: Greene County Commission looks to return to government campus