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Consultants propose tripling evidence storage for Elbert County, weigh standalone building
Summary
Willdan’s assessment for Elbert County’s Justice Center recommends expanding the sheriff’s evidence room from roughly 390 sq ft to about 950 sq ft, repurposing a 1,200 sq ft OES space for intake, or building a freestanding facility; consultants said asbestos and mold testing and an investment-grade audit are next steps.
Willdan consultants and Elbert County officials on July 15 reviewed proposals to expand evidence storage at the Justice Center, where staff said the current evidence room holds roughly 390–392 square feet and about 1,076 cubic feet of material.
"We're bringing in way more items than we have space for," Paul McCarthy, the county’s property-and-evidence custodian, said, noting that the office logged about 274 items in 2025 and had recorded 448 items year-to-date. Consultants said the existing footprint and ad hoc outdoor connex storage have produced evidence-loss and preservation risks.
Consultants outlined three main options. The first would expand the sheriff’s in‑building evidence room to about 950 square feet and increase storage volume to roughly 6,160 cubic feet by raising ceiling height and adding archival, track-mounted shelving. "We're tripling the space and almost quintupling the cubic feet," Mike Hensler of Willdan said.
The second option would repurpose an adjacent OES/OEM space of about 1,200 square feet as intake and long-term storage, producing more than 2,000 square feet of combined evidence capacity and enabling a dedicated processing area for initial evidence handling.
The third option is a freestanding evidence building. Officials said prior procurement rounds produced widely varying bids—about $1.5 million to $4.6 million—largely because specifications and footprints differed; earlier examples consulted averaged roughly 2,700–6,000 square feet for full standalone facilities.
Sheriff’s Office leadership emphasized security and operational speed. "Anything we can do, especially on an emergency call, that we can cut down the current 20 to 25 minutes to load out would be acceptable," the sheriff’s representative said, flagging climate control needs for armored vehicles and ammunition storage and repair costs for delaminating ballistic glass.
Willdan’s architect Wells Squire recommended reviewing high‑density, law‑enforcement-specific storage solutions to increase capacity in smaller footprints and urged a processing area design to maintain chain-of-custody controls. Consultants also warned that incomplete historical asbestos and mold surveys require current sampling before final design: those targeted tests were estimated at about $1,500 each.
County Manager Sean Fletcher and commissioners asked for a one‑page narrative and side‑by‑side square‑foot comparisons showing existing versus proposed sizes for each area; consultants said that analysis and the investment‑grade audit will be part of their final deliverable.
Next steps: consultants will obtain asbestos and mold sampling and incorporate those results into an investment‑grade audit and cost estimate, with deliverables and scheduling to follow once abatement risk is resolved. No funding decisions were made at the session.
