Remove or reuse? Beltrami County considers options for retiring jail

BEMIDJI — Construction in the Bemidji Industrial Park is moving steadily along on a new 243-bed Beltrami County correctional facility, expected to begin receiving incarcerated people in March 2027.

Beltrami County commissioners are evaluating three options for what to do with the current jail.

The least costly option is to remove the current jail and build a new sallyport for the judicial center, at an estimated $6 million. The most expensive is to remodel the facility into new leasable space, for nearly $10 million. A partial removal-remodel was also proposed for $8.6 million.

County Administrator Tom Barry said during a Tuesday, Aug. 19, work session that creating more leasable space in a saturated market may not be the most fiscally responsible.

"We have the Central school that's being advertised right now, that there doesn't seem to be any interest in, or very little. There is the federal building that also has an enormous amount of space," Barry said, referencing two vacant spaces in the city. "We've got two big buildings that flank either side of this [the current jail] on the north and south that aren't being leased or can't even be sold."

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Beltrami County

Beltrami County residents voted overwhelmingly in 2023 to pass a local option sales tax to fund the new jail’s construction. The tax will also fund either the demolition or the remodel of the existing facility.

Commissioners opted to wait on deciding the current jail’s fate until a meeting in October, with Commissioner Tim Sumner saying he wished to hear constituents’ ideas on the next steps.

“I'm curious what to do with the building because the community is curious, too,” Sumner said. “They've been asking."

The downtown jail has a tunnel connecting to the Beltrami County Courthouse, which is used to transport incarcerated people to hearings. Since the COVID-19 pandemic brought the advent of Zoom court, more people attend their hearings remotely.

Board Chair Craig Gaasvig said maybe the board could think outside the box for how to use the space.

“I'd love to see if we could somehow make a day care facility on the second floor there,” Gaasvig said. “But we got to live with our means too. And with our situation, budget-wise.”

The county is taking public comments on the three current jail options through Oct. 1, with the engineer's schematics on each option on the county website.

Construction on the new facility is so far on time and on budget, with the interior buildout expected to start in September.