Architect presents downtown and industrial-park master-plan options for consolidated justice and county campus

Venture Architects presented multiple master-plan concepts to the Richland County Campus Reconfiguration Committee on potential locations and configurations for a consolidated law enforcement center, justice center and supporting county government facilities.

The architect, Corey with Venture Architects, showed three downtown options that vary which street would close, how many surface stalls remain and whether a multilevel parking structure would be needed, and an industrial-park (greenfield) alternative sited outside downtown that would accommodate a larger consolidated government center.

Why it matters: the committee is weighing trade-offs between downtown infill—where existing businesses and pedestrian traffic could benefit from retained facilities—and a greenfield industrial-park site that offers space for larger footprints but raises environmental, floodplain and archaeological questions that could add cost and delay.

Corey said one downtown option would provide about 45 public stalls and nine sheriff stalls, while another option would provide 41 public stalls and nine sheriff stalls; a parking-structure alternative would give about 42 stalls per floor. “Our estimator … gave me a number approximately $50,000 per stall,” Corey said when describing two-story parking-structure cost estimates.

Corey also outlined sequencing and connectivity needs the committee must consider: if the law enforcement center is built first, temporary connections must safely convey detainees to the existing courtroom; if the justice center goes first, the committee would need an alternative secure route to the existing jail. Downtown options can be phased, he said, but full consolidation downtown would likely require property acquisition or demolition of existing county facilities to fit the full program.

On the industrial-park alternative, Corey identified a light-green boundary on the plan as wetlands and said the design tries to avoid that area. He described layouts that stack justice functions vertically above sheriff facilities to create secure vertical connections between jail holding and courtrooms, and pointed to large on-site laydown and fleet-parking areas for sheriff operations.

Southwest Regional Planning Commission Director Troy Nagy, who joined later in the meeting, flagged two constraints for the industrial site: the green map layer Corey used includes a mapped 500-year floodplain and, separately, the state records show two Native American archaeological sites on the parcel. Nagy said the State Historic Preservation Office would work with the county to analyze any archaeological impacts.

Committee members asked for follow-up material. A member requested the images be shared outside the meeting; Corey agreed to send the drawings to the county administrator for distribution. Questions at the end of the presentation focused on square-footage assumptions, parking and stormwater runoff near the wetlands, and whether emergency services (EMS, fire) could be co-located at the greenfield site.

The presentation closed with no formal action; the committee asked staff to circulate the slide images and to continue evaluating both downtown and industrial-park options for future meetings.