Ocean County plans to spend $92M on Justice Complex; 84% more than original estimate
TOMS RIVER - A funding ordinance to appropriate $92 million for the permitting and construction of an addition onto the Ocean County Justice Complex was introduced by the Board of Commissioners on Wednesday.
The estimated cost of the project has increased 84% since it was first proposed three years ago, from $50 million in 2020 to $70 million in 2022, and now to $92 million in 2023 — and that’s all before a single shovel has broken ground.
The ordinance calls for the county government to borrow $85 million of the projected cost in the form of issuing bonds. Previously, the commissioners attributed the rising costs to inflation, international supply chain issues, as well as engineering problems and soil contamination at the proposed construction site.
In a second appropriation, the board introduced a $250,000 funding ordinance for the design of a separate building to be constructed elsewhere downtown that will serve as a new headquarters for the Ocean County Sheriff’s Department.
How we got here: Ocean County Justice Complex to get $50M addition by 2025
A public hearing and final adoption on both ordinances is scheduled to be held at the board’s next regular meeting on Aug. 2.
Ocean County Commissioner Gary Quinn, who is liaison to the Sheriff’s Office, said construction on the new sheriff’s headquarters was not expected to start until 2025 or 2026. If all goes according to the county’s original plans, that should be about the same time that the planned Justice Complex annex is completed.
The four-story annex — which is expected to add 124,214 square feet of floor space to the existing justice complex — is to be built on what is now a parking lot between the Ocean County Jail and the campus of Toms River High School South on Hooper Avenue.
County officials have said the expansion projects are necessary because they have run out of courtroom space, and administrative office areas that were last expanded in the 1980s, in a county that has undergone a nearly 90% growth in population since that era.
Rising price: Why the cost of the Ocean County Justice Complex addition has ballooned
Currently, the county government operates an assortment of rented facilities scattered throughout downtown Toms River for the state Superior Court vicinage, which officials have said are expensive to lease, maintain and guard with sheriff’s officers.
Although the county has made extensive renovations over the past decade, Sheriff Michael G. Matronardy has referred to his department’s facilities inside the justice complex as inadequate to his agency’s needs, and more generally, “a dump.”
Since he took office in 2014, he has had to contend with human waste raining down into his third-floor office suite emanating from plumbing issues in a portion of the county jail above him on the fourth floor.
What’s planned next: Ocean County to explore major expansion of county government campus in Toms River
In 2017, Mastronardy temporarily evacuated his office staff to the county’s 911 operations center on Chestnut Street after an inmate in the county jail above his office suite attempted to flush a prison-issued jumpsuit down a cell toilet. Several pipes burst, including the main sewer line. The damage cost the county about $100,000.
The commissioners have discussed building the new sheriff’s headquarters at Mott Place in downtown Toms River.
Contact Asbury Park Press reporter Erik Larsen at elarsen@gannettnj.com.
This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Ocean County to spend $92M on Justice Complex addition in Toms River
