New jail dedicated to late sheriff
By Steve Herring
Published in News on January 22, 2017 12:30 AM
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News-Argus/CASEY MOZINGO
Sheriff Larry Pierce and Teresa Winders cut the ribbon for the Carey A. Winders Detention Center Friday, surrounded by Winders' family and Wayne County commissioners. The facility is expected to be operational by the middle of February.
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News-Argus/CASEY MOZINGO
Wayne County Sheriff Larry Pierce speaks during the ribbon cutting ceremony at the Carey A. Winders Detention Center on Friday.
The late Sheriff Carey Winders would be pleased to see the soon-to-be opened jail on North William Street that bears his name, his widow Teresa said.
"It is a wonderful facility," Mrs. Winders said following Friday morning's ribbon cutting for the Carey A. Winders Detention Center. "It is something that he had a vision for years ago that he knew we needed a new facility, and I think he would really be proud of this facility.
"My family and I are so honored that his name is on this building and that it is in his honor and his memory. We are just so very thankful."
The county expects to begin moving inmates into the jail by mid-February.
"As far as I know all of our technical problems that we were facing have been resolved," Sheriff Larry Pierce said prior to the ceremony. "We are currently training our people on how to operate the facility efficiently.
"It will probably take approximately two to three weeks to finish up on our training. So I hope by mid February we actually start bringing inmates to our facility."
Repairs at the old jail downtown will begin immediately after inmates begin being transferred to the new facility, he said.
The old jail is currently over capacity by about 60 inmates, while another 66 are housed in other jails. Housing inmates in other jails is costing the county about $1 million annually.
"So we are ready to start bringing them back as soon as possible because it is costing our taxpayers a lot of money for them to be housed outside the county," Pierce said.
Inmates will be transferred in stages.
"That will be part of our training process, to bring part of inmates over for training purposes," Pierce said.
The ceremony, attended by the Winders family, local elected officials and local and out-of-county law enforcement, had to be moved inside at the last minute because of rain.
But the weather failed to diminish the celebration that local officials said has been a long time coming.
Public tours were held from 11 a.m. until 1 p.m.
"Sheriff Winders and I, along with some others started this project way back in 2002,"Wayne County Commissioner John Bell, who chaired the board's Detention Center Committee, told the crowd. "We got up to 2008 and the economy went south, and we had to back off. A couple of years ago we got it started back again.
"Now I don't know anybody who wanted a good jail for Wayne County as bad as Sheriff Winders wanted this to happen. You know, when I think about law enforcement, he didn't have to be a law enforcement officer. He could have been a good comedian if you knew him."
Winders was known for his sense of humor and joking, Bell said.
"I want to thank county commissioners for when I put this motion on the floor to make this the Carey A. Winders Detention Center," Bell said. "We had a vote of 7-0, which was great I think. And I want to thank the Winders family for allowing us to put this name on this building.
"For all of you in Wayne County who knew Carey Winders, he was a good law enforcement officer. Everything that he did, it was out of good strong passion for the county of Wayne. He was a good citizen, a good law enforcement officer and above all, a good comedian."
The jail is something that Winders had a vision for, Pierce said.
"Carey was my sheriff, and Carey was my friend," Pierce said. "Carey was a man of vision. Many times he and I would get together after a supper we had been to. We'd talk about things he wanted to see for our community and our county, our sheriff's office.
"This is one of the things that he had envisioned, and it has come today to be. I want to say again that Carey was a leader for his staff, his community and we will always remember him for that."
The jail will house misdemeanor offenders and other minimum security inmates, the "bad guys," will stay at the existing jail downtown, Commission Chairman Bill Pate said during the ceremony.
"Today is a special day in so many ways," Pate said. "It has been a long time coming. The reason we got here today we recognized sometime in the last few years, it probably started even before I became a commissioner, that we were overcrowded in our current jail."
"We are spending $50 a day per inmate, shipping them out to other counties. It has been costing this county a million dollars a year to do that. We can no longer sustain this kind of cost, and we took action."
The Detention Center Committee, chaired by Bell, was formed in mid 2013, Pate said.
The committee looked at several locations including a shuttered state prison near Cherry Hospital. Fortunately, the county did not choose that site, which flooded during Hurricane Matthew, he said.
Committee members also visited jails in several other counties to help prepare locally, Pate said
Those trips included one to Rowan County where commissioners saw a dorm-style jail that the Winders' Detention Center is based on, Pate said.
Building a traditional jail the size of the Winders Detention Center would have cost more than $30 million, but using the dormitory style saved the county considerable money, Pate said.
"The building was put on this side of the property because long term we will build another traditional jail as a Sheriff's Office complex," Pate said.
In May 2014 Mosley Architects was awarded the contract to design the jail based on the firm's experience in building jails, he said.
In July 2015 a groundbreaking was held after Daniels and Daniels Construction was awarded the $9.4 million construction contract for the 38,500-square-foot, single-story, 221-bed jail.
The jail has three dorm-style wings, each capable of housing 64 inmates, and one wing of 15 double cells.
There are two control rooms, each able to monitor two wings with utility runs located behind each of the wings.
That allows work to be done without coming in contact with an inmate, and there is no concern about having tools.
Also, water flow in the lavatories and toilets can be shut off from the control rooms so that inmates cannot cause them to overflow.
A full kitchen was not included in the plans because of a future plan to build a larger jail on the same site and that would include a kitchen large enough to accommodate both facilities.
The county is paying cash for the jail that is the first phase of a larger envisioned judicial center that includes construction of a larger jail that will be connected to the satellite jail through a secure corridor.
No money has been earmarked, nor timetable established, for that project.
With the new jail, the county anticipates having extra space that it can rent to other counties.