If voters approve Denver’s plan to build a $378 million jail and courthouse downtown on Tuesday, the first new jail cell will open in 2009.
The proposal calls for building a 1,500-bed jail and 35 courtrooms on the 400 and 500 blocks of West Colfax Avenue. It also allows for a renovation of the city’s primary jail on Smith Road.
The city’s primary intent is to ease crowding in its jail system, which routinely houses more than 2,000 inmates in space designed for 1,672.
Opponents of the proposal have questioned the construction schedule.
“The question becomes, if we’re so concerned about improving conditions for inmates, why are we building a parking lot first?” asked Christie Donner, a leader of the opposition campaign, Citizens for Responsible Spending, in a recent debate.
Indeed, the first project to begin construction would be a parking garage adjacent to the justice-center site. That’s because the city needs to relocate a post office and Denver Public Schools parking lot on the site. The post office will occupy a first-floor location in the parking garage, and DPS would gain use of one of the garage’s levels.
Also complicating the construction schedule: The Rocky Mountain News, which occupies a building on the justice-center site, will not vacate it until the fall of 2006. The city bought the building in 2002 in preparation for the justice-center project.
Construction of the justice center is scheduled for completion in 2009. That will allow the city to shift inmates awaiting trial from the Smith Road jail to the new jail downtown. In turn, sentenced inmates could be moved from the older, obsolete portions of the Smith Road jail to newer areas.
After opening the justice center, the city would embark on a renovation of the Smith Road jail. Those plans call for razing old buildings containing 464 jail beds and replacing them with modernized facilities with 384 beds. Thus, the Smith Road renovation would amount to a net reduction of 80 beds, but it would add safer, more humane facilities.
During construction, the city plans to move forward with its studies and adoption of diversionary programs and alternatives to incarceration – an effort opponents decry as too late. The city is assembling a 32-member Crime Prevention and Control Commission to help with that task.
Staff writer Kris Hudson can be reached at 303-820-1593 or khudson@denverpost.com.
