With construction still proceeding on Bell County’s jail expansion, officials will celebrate a major milestone in the project’s construction.
Officials announced that the county will hold a private topping out celebration at the construction site Wednesday, commemorating the building reaching its maximum elevation. The $92.5 million Loop Jail expansion, 1201 Huey Drive in Belton, was approved last year and will include 715 new beds for inmates.
Officials said that the new facility is expected to almost double the current capacity of the Loop Jail, which jail staff tries to keep at 925 for organization purposes.
James Stafford, spokesman for the county, said construction on the project began last year with many more months of work ahead.
“The tower is approximately 40% complete at this time,” Stafford said. “It is scheduled to be completed next summer.”
Officials said that currently the expansion’s minimum security section and its bond office are both completed, with the new administration office set to be finished by the end of July. Work on the jail’s medical expansion only recently began.
The jail’s minimum security facility was one of the first phases of the project that was completed, with the county prioritizing it due to the many Bell County inmates currently being housed in other facilities across the state.
Units in the minimum security facility, Stafford said, are already complete but have not yet been open for use. Officials expect that the north unit of the facility will be open to inmates soon.
The minimum security portion of the project, officials said, would consist of 192 beds while the new jail tower would see 523 beds.
Officials estimated last fiscal year that the county spent about $4 million to keep its inmates in other facilities, up from $2.5 million the year before.
“So not only is space getting hard to find, it is getting expensive,” County Judge David Blackburn said last year. “So the sooner we can get additional space in our jail, and our campus in Bell County, the better off we will be financially.”
As construction on the facility has proceeded, officials have made sure to focus on the recruitment of new jail staff so the building will be able to accommodate inmates once completed.
“We have to fill this jail to begin with or we will have a $100 million facility sitting out here with nobody in it and we will still be spending $6 million a year or more housing prisoners somewhere else,” Commissioner Bobby Whitson said.
Stafford said the county’s greatest challenge to date on the project has been acquiring the needed materials despite ongoing supply chain issues.
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