The Hernando County Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) is pondering a trio of options for revamping Sheriff’s Office facilities to meet the area’s growing need for law enforcement services. The estimated cost of those options ranges from $105 million to $130 million, excluding the cost of the land to build a new set of facilities.
During its regular Feb. 27 meeting, Hernando County Sheriff’s Office (HCSO) Major Phillip Lakin told the panel that the agency is currently squeezed for space and challenged to meet the increased calls for service and even evidence storage. “Our staff does a really good job of working with what they have,” Lakin said.
The process of formulating a master plan to address those challenges began about a year ago when HCSO Col. Kenneth Hayden approached County Construction Projects Coordinator Erik van de Boogaard to come up with some creative solutions to the agency’s spatial problems. “It became abundantly clear as I walked through the building that a larger effort was going to need to be taken,” said van de Boogaard.
As a result, the consulting firm of HDR was hired to create a master plan for the agency. The firm’s specialist in law enforcement agency design, David Bostwick, told the BOCC that the resulting plan was intended to help the panel understand the proposed need for upgrading the existing HCSO facilities. “The whole point of this is to understand where you’re headed in the future in terms of staff, in terms of workspace, in terms of equipment, so that you can properly plan for it,” he said.
According to the HDR report, when the current HCSO headquarters was built in 1990, the population of Hernando County stood at around 100,000. Today is more than 200,000. “So there’s been a 100 percent increase in county population since that headquarters was built,” Bostwick said.”
Meanwhile, HCSO law enforcement personnel, excluding detention and communications staff, totaled 177 in 1990. By contrast, the HCSO said it needs 367 law enforcement staff to meet the County’s service needs. “So as you can see (the need for personnel) also grown, but the headquarters hasn’t,” Bostwick said.
In response, the HDR report outlined a trio of scenarios that could address the HCSO’s current need to expand and accommodate increased needs into 2025.
The report’s first solution calls for totally redeveloping the HCSO’s facilities on a new greenfield; currently undeveloped site consisting of a 125,000 sq. ft. new headquarters building, 21,000 sq. ft. for a fleet building to house HCSO vehicles, and 7,000 sq. ft to house the agency’s the purchasing department.
The report estimates the cost of that option to be $105,265,700, including architectural, engineering and testing fees and so-called “soft costs” such as furniture.
“Of all the options that we looked at, this is the least expensive because it doesn’t require phasing and it also doesn’t require disruptions to current operations,” Bostwick said.
The other two scenarios would makeover the current HCSO facilities site and would be the more expensive of the three because of the challenges posed by the site. “One of the first things we do is look at the site to see how much of it is buildable,” Bostwick said. “In this case, this particular site has flood plains, it has wetlands on it, so only about 50 percent of the site is usable for construction.”
In the second option, the HDR report calls for the razing of the current youth shelter in order to construct a new HCSO headquarters and a new parking garage on the current site. “We don’t have enough space for surface parking (on that site) and that’s one reason why the second and third scenarios are more expensive than the greenfield site because structured parking averages about $45,000 a space compared to about $4,500 for the surface lot,” Bostwick said.
In addition, the work would involve evacuating the headquarters in order to rebuild it, and the building fleet headquarters and purchasing a building. The cost of that option is an estimated $112,753,700.
Finally, the third option calls for building a new headquarters just to the west of the existing one and constructing a parking garage for HCSO personnel vehicles. “Other phases would include other support buildings such as maintenance and purchasing,” Bostwick said. The cost of that option is estimated at $130,798,600.
County Administrator Jeff Rogers says the cost of acquiring the land to construct a new HCSO campus remains unknown. “But we estimate acquiring 30 acres,” Rogers said. “Certainly, we’d want to allow expansion from (building the headquarters) – I don’t think we want to landlock ourselves from the get-go.”
He also said that the buildings on the old site that were formerly used by the Sheriff’s headquarters could be repurposed. “Yes, 100 percent, we would repurpose those buildings – space needs are always growing,” he said.
He also said that if the County chooses to build the HCSO facilities on a greenfield site, other county facilities could be constructed there as well. “There are needs in the county and we’re trying to figure out how we can put these all on one site so that if we do buy property, we can maximize it so we can make sure the government in other areas are all working together,” Rogers said.
Chair Elizabeth Narverud said that no action by the BOCC was immediately required. The body is expected to take up the matter of the new HCSO facilities at a later date.
