Geary County commissioners on Thursday reviewed schematic plans for the county jail from HNN Architects that would either renovate the existing facility while keeping its newest addition or replace most of the building with a new structure on an adjacent parking lot.

Sean Harding of HNN Architects summarized the firm’s assessment and recommendation, saying the county’s older wings have structural and circulation problems and are staff-inefficient. “We suggested keeping the newest portion of the building, tearing down the rest of the older buildings, and building something that aligned floor to floor and made more sense from a staffing standpoint,” Harding said.

Under Option 1, the architects would anchor the design to the current newer addition and create a central booking area with dedicated medical cells, padded rooms for behavioral health needs, interview rooms and a centralized control desk to improve indirect supervision. Option 1 fits roughly 166 beds in the schematic the firm showed. Option 2 fills the county’s north parking lot outside the existing building and yields about 188 beds with a three-level layout and a mezzanine sightline for the control room, the architects said.

Commissioners focused on practical trade-offs: Option 1 would reuse part of the existing building and retain downtown parking but limits capacity; Option 2 meets a larger program but consumes the county’s downtown parking and creates transport logistics to the courthouse. Commissioners and staff raised concerns about losing employees if most of the site is demolished and inmates must be housed off-site during construction. One commissioner said the county could lose staff unless the county covers wages during the transition.

Panel members also discussed operations and revenue options. Commissioners asked whether a new facility could house federal prisoners to bring revenue back to the county; the architects said a new, code-compliant design would make meeting federal requirements easier but that revenue would depend on remaining near full occupancy.

Harding outlined an illustrative schedule based on recent projects: approximately eight months to complete construction documents after schematic design and roughly 16 months for construction, not counting time required for a bond or sales-tax election. With typical referendum timing, the architects estimated a realistic opening could fall in the late 2020s to 2030 depending on the county’s election schedule.

Commissioners did not take formal action on a preferred option but agreed to form a working group to study parking, staffing and financing, and to plan public outreach before any referendum or bond proposal.

The commission’s next regular meeting was set for Monday; the architects left a flash drive with schematic materials for county staff to review.