BROOKINGS – Brookings County Commissioner Lee Ann Pierce, above left, explains the board’s decision in favor of a jail expansion on the courthouse square to Pat Fishback, during an open house on the exterior design of the new addition on Monday at the Brookings City & County Government Center.
About two dozen people attended the meeting, in addition to county personnel and three representatives from BKV Group, an architecture firm from Minneapolis that worked on the design of the building.
Below, Chris Hutton, architectural designer with BKV Group, shows how the jail expansion and remodel will be positioned in the neighborhood on a 3-D model made by architectural students at South Dakota State University. Anthony Enright, project manager, is seated at left and David Horner, architectural designer, is standing in the middle.
Enright said their goal was to give the jail a “pedestrian friendly feeling” and to match the other structures in the area, including the courthouse, the existing Sheriff’s Office, and the nearby First Presbyterian Church. They “want the building to be a tasteful addition to the community,” Enright said.
The addition will take up the northeast corner of the courthouse square and will cover the area taken by the current jail and an existing parking lot, as well as some green space, said Bart Sweebe, jail administrator.
Brookings County commissioners have voted to build the jail on the courthouse square and have chosen Option D as the preferred look, with high windows and simplified decorative elements.
“This is the site that they selected, the site that makes the most sense,” Horner said.
Enright assured the crowd that the courthouse was not affected by the new addition. Horner pointed out the closest the new jail will come to the courthouse is 16 feet on the north side.
Some people expressed a preference for Option C because it had the bronze elements borrowed from the courthouse’s cupola. Special attention was paid to Option D’s corner, which is on Fourth Street and Seventh Avenue, from how it encroaches on the aesthetics of the neighborhood to whether it can be reduced in size. There will be mechanical elements in that corner that need to be near the cells, the professionals explained.
The two-story structure will have cells on both levels and folks wanted to know why there couldn’t be a basement, thus reducing the height of the building. It’s not allowed by the correctional system, Enright said, because the cells all need access to daylight.
A good share of the audience just did not want the jail to be built on the courthouse square at all, but to be built off-site. Some people didn’t feel the commissioners seriously considered an off-site location. Some didn’t want the courthouse overshadowed by the new building. Others cited safety concerns, saying a jail doesn’t belong in a residential area. Some questioned how BKV’s design could be expanded should the need arise in the next few years.
“This building will meet the county’s needs for the next 40 years,” Enright said.
That was echoed before the meeting by Pierce when she addressed a comment made at a previous meeting.
“We will not outgrow the Brookings County courthouse any time in the next 50 years, and we really can’t project any further than that,” she said, adding that a remodel was done in 2014 to add a courtroom with a jury box.
Before the meeting ended, a few of the people complimented the architectural group on its designs and acknowledged they were upset with the commissioners, not the architects.
