BROOKINGS – Brookings County commissioners selected their favorite of four designs for the Brookings County Detention Center expansion Tuesday, and they set the date and time for a public open house that will review the four options they examined.

The open house was scheduled for 5:30 p.m. May 14, with the presentation starting at 6 p.m. in the third-floor chambers of the Brookings City & County Government Center.

Despite the differences in the four designs from the team at the BKV Group, the architecture firm leading the project, there were some constants among them.

“Some of our priorities when we started looking at this were respecting the courthouse, maintaining the historic courthouse as the primary focus of the site, respecting the design language of the buildings on-site in the surrounding neighborhood,” Anthony Enright, a senior architectural designer at the BKV Group, said.

Regardless of the final design that’s used, architects do have a floorplan that won’t require much change to accommodate the exterior’s design.

 “In all of the options, we are looking at doing two things to the existing law enforcement center. One is removing some of those really heavy cornice elements you see at the detention center and simplifying that,” Enright said. “And also doing treatments to the brick that’ll change the color of the brick so that it ties in better with the limestone at the courthouse. That would be a stain or some sort of paint that would change the color of the brick, probably a stain that will lighten it a bit.”

It was also noted that people walking by won’t be able to see through the jail addition’s windows thanks to a film that’d be put on the windows.

The four designs show a kind of evolution from the starting point, Option A, with each design emphasizing different features and how much it’d incorporate elements of the courthouse or the sheriff’s office and detention center.

Of the bunch, Option A is the simplest in terms of its design, fitting as the starting point for the designers.

“It kind of has the classical look of the courthouse but not a lot of detail to it,” Enright said.

Then, based on feedback on that design from the jail expansion committee, two more designs were produced, Options B and C.

Option B draws more inspiration from the courthouse, even incorporating a decorative piece into the jail addition that’s reflective of the metalwork of the windows in the copula on top of the courthouse.

In this design, the sally port along the north side of the addition is utilized in order to add variety to the roofline.

Option C transitions features and materials across its walls from the sheriff’s office to the courthouse, helping blend it to both structures.

“Starting on the east, you’ll see mostly brick as it relates and is connected to the law enforcement center. Then as it wraps around to the north, it’s a mix of brick and stone. On the west façade, it becomes all stone,” explained David Horner, an architectural designer for the BKV Group.

It also incorporates more bronze elements into its design, a call back to the bronze copula of the courthouse.

Feedback from the jail expansion committee regarding Options B and C were put to use in creating Option D. To tie the whole structure together, ribbing is used, an element also found in the courthouse’s architecture.

Brookings County commissioners favored Option D, and planned to present it as such in the open house that they scheduled for May 14.

At the meeting, designers from the BKV Group will go over their presentation again and show people the four designs considered and the thought process for the different designs.

“We want to make sure the public understands that multiple options were looked at and this was a process and not just something that was automatically jumped to,” Enright said.

The goal is to have a final design ready by May 25 so that it can be included in the June agenda for the Historic Preservation Commission.

They also moved forward with approving Foresight Land Surveyors conducting the site survey. They had the low bid, at $3,200. This was the group BKV Group recommended the county move forward with. The goal is to have the site survey done by May 17.

As to what a site survey is: “That would be identifying exactly the grades on site, the elevations of everything and also the exact dimensional qualities of what’s there on site right now,” Enright said.

It examines all the different factors on site, including exact sizes and shapes of everything that’s found on site. It notes locations of trees and where building lines are and property lines.

Contact Eric Sandbulte at esandbulte@brookingsregister.com.

BKV Group images: 

Brookings County commissioners were presented several designs for the Brookings County Detention Center expansion project, and pictured is their favored design, Option D. The above rendering shows the addition from a northwestern perspective, looking to the southeast.

Below, the BKV Group has presented four exterior designs of the Brookings County Detention Center expansion for the Brookings County Commission to consider.