Allen County Jail Saga: What’s the Current State of Play?

A federal judge overseeing the new prison wants to know if funding approved by the Allen County Council will be enough to build a new prison.

FORT WAYNE, Ind. (WANE) — It’s been several years since a federal judge ruled that conditions at the current Allen County Jail are unconstitutional.

Since then, there have been countless changes in the history of the new prison’s construction.

At present this saga has reached a somewhat stalemate.

As Allen County Sheriff Troy Hershberger tries to limit the jail’s inmate population, the Allen County Board of Commissioners believes it is ready to begin construction on a new jail, which was supposed to happen in late May.

Instead, things stalled because of a lawsuit in Indiana Tax Court filed by four citizens belonging to a group called Allen County Residents Against the Prison.

The case concerns jail financing, and specifically the county’s plan to lease the Allen County Courthouse as a financing mechanism.

In a recent document filed by a lawyer representing four citizens, the plan was called “illegal and invalid.”

At Wednesday’s Allen County Commission meeting, WANE 15 spoke with council Chief of Staff Chris Cloud.

Cloud said the financing mechanism is a complicated process that, on paper, allows the county to use the courthouse to immediately pay interest on bonds needed to finance the new jail, rather than letting that interest accrue over the three years it would take to build a new jail.

He explained that the county would establish a construction company and then lease the courthouse building to his company.

Cloud says this allows the county to maintain control of the courthouse and — according to their financiers — would save taxpayers millions of dollars.

“If we didn’t have that courthouse option, we would have paid $24 million more net for this project if we hadn’t done it. So what it does is save the taxpayers $24 million on this project. The courthouse is not at risk at all,” he said. “The commissioners would never put such a valuable community asset at risk if that was a real risk. There’s no risk involved. So it’s just a mechanism that the state allows us to use and a building that we had available.”

Cloud added that the courthouse was the only property of sufficient value that they could use in conjunction with interest over the three years of construction. They could use the Coliseum if it were not already being used in the same way to pay off bonds.

When will construction begin? A federal judge in a case against Allen County recently filed an order expressing concern about the long delay caused by an Indiana Tax Court case he can’t do anything about.

Cloud realizes it’s too late to take action, but believes they’ll be able to move forward once the citizens v. prison case is resolved.

“Really at this point Allen County is waiting for this lawsuit to be resolved so that we can proceed. If and when it is resolved quickly, we can move forward with awarding bids, getting bonds for the project and moving forward with construction fairly quickly. But I wouldn’t say that we are definitely behind schedule at this point,” Cloud explained.

Developer Weigand Construction is doing everything it can to keep the process moving, according to Cloud. The county is still accepting construction bids, and the finance team can move quickly when it’s time to move forward.