Demolition begins
By Steve Herring
Published in News on September 4, 2015 1:46 PM
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News-Argus/MELISSA KEY
A/K Grading and Demolition Inc. workers start tearing down the former Masons department store on Wednesday, beginning the around 30-day demolition process. Daniels and Daniels Construction Co. hopes to begin building the new Carey A. Winders Detention Center located on North William Street in October.
Demolition of the old Masons department store on North William Street began Thursday morning and is expected to take about 30 days to complete. Wayne County officials plan to build a $10 million satellite jail on the site.
A&K Co. of LaGrange is doing the demolition work.
Starting last week, crews tore up a portion of the asphalt parking lot. However, not all of the parking lot will be torn up at once, said Carl Russell, project manager for Daniels and Daniels Construction Co., which is building the jail.
Leaving some of the asphalt in place means the company will not have to bring in gravel to create roads for the heavy equipment to use, he said.
Also under way is some of the site work infrastructure including underground piping and drainage.
Some of the soil is not suitable for building and will have to be undercut, refilled and compacted, Russell said.
Rather than haul in backfill, the company plans to grind up demolition material from the store, as well as from other county demolition work, to use as fill. Any additional fill dirt will come from the 1,000-acre county landfill at Dudley, County Manager George Wood said.
"So there is no reason buy dirt," he said. "We have plenty. Once they do that they will be ready to go."
The undercutting will take about another 20 days after the demolition is completed.
Work on building the footing for the jail could begin as early as the second week in October, Russell said.
The project should be "substantially" completed by the end of October of 2016 and completely finished by November 2016.
The jail will be named the Carey A. Winders Detention Center in memory of Winders, who served as sheriff for nearly 20 years. Winders, 57, died unexpectedly in January 2014.
On July 17, nearly 200 people, including Winders' family and a large contingent of law enforcement attended the groundbreaking ceremony for the jail that county leaders have been discussing since 2004.
The existing 200-bed jail is chronically overcrowded, forcing the county to house inmates in other county jails. That is costing Wayne County nearly $1 million a year.
The new jail will have 218 beds and will house misdemeanant and minimum-security inmates.
The 38,500-square-foot single-story jail will be T-shaped with the top of the T, where the cell pods will be located, running parallel to Stronach Avenue.
The leg of the T will house administration, the kitchen, laundry and other offices and will be perpendicular to Stronach Avenue with a secure, controlled entryway facing that street.
Each pod will have a fenced-in recreational yard.
The jail will front on Stronach Avenue and is the first phase of a larger judicial center.
The plan includes construction of a larger jail behind the satellite jail.
Provisions have been made in the plan to provide for a secure connection between the two.