- November 17, 2024
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County commissioners are divided on whether or not to tear down old wings of the former Memorial Hospital building as the facility is remade into a Sheriff’s Office Operations Center.
Sheriff James Manfre doesn’t need them, he told commissioners at a Monday, May 4, workshop.
But commissioners had hoped to use the space to house other services — such as the health department, free clinic, or guardian ad litem offices — that Manfre feared may conflict with the building’s law enforcement purpose.
“I’ve never had a problem with other county services being on that site,” Manfre said. “But it’s hard to have a site with law enforcement and other uses that are really compatible.”
It’s also difficult to design a law enforcement building around a structure with fingers, he said, and the hospital building has four of them, each about 4,150 square feet.
Redeveloping them would cost about $2.25 million; tearing them down and starting fresh would cost about $2.73 million.
Commissioner Barbara Revels said at the workshop that the county bought the building with plans to use it as more than just an operations center.
“When we were looking at acquiring this property, we said … that we had social service needs, and that that site, according to us, had a great amount of square footage for other social service needs,” she said. “I think that we can maintain those buildings so they look decent on the outside, and maintain them and put windows on them and keep them ready for build out.”
Commissioner Nate McLaughlin said that if the county intended the building to be a Sheriff’s Operations Center, it shouldn’t box the Sheriff into a design that would be incompatible with that use.
“I’m fully in favor of demolition now. I wanted originally when we were looking at this to demolish the whole thing,” he said.
Commissioner George Hanns opposed demolition. “What sold me on this was pretty much what Mrs. Revels is saying, that we would solve so many problem by obtaining this site,” he said. “We paid a tremendous amount of money for that site as is, and maybe you won’t need my vote to do what you all want to do, but I’m going to vote my conscience, I can guarantee you that, and what I feel I supported in the very beginning.”
County Administrator Craig Coffey said he would bring the issue back to the board at a future meeting.
