JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – The conversation that was sparked in January about moving the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office administrative headquarters to another building was on the docket at a Tuesday special city council committee meeting.
At the meeting, city leaders announced that JSO has officially begun negotiations with Florida Blue to move the rest of the police headquarters offices to the Florida Blue building along Riverside Avenue near downtown.
There were already some JSO detectives working out of the leased space in that building.
If JSO built a new Police Memorial Building, it would cost as much as $470 million to fund, so the sheriff’s office believes the move is the best financial decision, especially since the cost to lease the office space dropped significantly since the pandemic.
The idea of relocating the jail was also addressed at the meeting. JSO’s pretrial detention center was built in 1991 to support a capacity of 2189 inmates. The current inmate population is 2631.
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The growing concerns about the jail aging, deteriorating and being overcrowded are mounting.
The committee envisions a new “world-class facility” that would have services and infrastructure that would address pretrial diversion, drug rehabilitation, mental health treatment and recidivism.
The committee did not provide a price tag for the “world-class facility” upgrade during the meeting, but committee Chairman Michael Boylan acknowledged a final decision is a long way away.
A consultant told the committee it “has built a political understanding of the problem,” which is as necessary as gaining an understanding of the technical and financial realities.
The consultant said what comes next is at least a year of intensive analysis of all the desired features of the new jail, followed by a request for proposals.
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