Saline County Commissioners Tuesday approved the schematic design for the new jail and sheriff's office.
"Once we found out what the site was, and the one that the county wanted to purchase, we spent some time as a team looking at that site," architect Jeff Lane of Treanor HL told commissioners this morning.
The site where the county plans to build the new jail is located southeast of the intersection of East Pacific Avenue and North Front Street at the east end of East Woodland Avenue.
"We spent time thinking about the overall orientation of the building. Part of what we're trying to accomplish here with this site and with the building is creating an efficient building, both from a foot print perspective as well as from an energy perspective. So we actually spent a lot of time looking at wind, sun, how do we capture enough sun to actually be able to turn off lights or dim lights and reduce the electricity within this facility," Lane explained.
The team finally settled on a northeast-facing building, he told the commissioners.
"Do we know what that quantity of efficiency is? At this point, we don't, but I can tell you that based on the site orientation we feel that we have created an area or created an actual orientation that's going to allow for some efficiencies within what we're trying to accomplish. It also is allowing us to, from a utility perspective, bring utilities to this site in a better manner than it would have the other way," Lane said.
The schematic design also allows for future growth of the jail as well as for another county building, Lane explained.
At the conclusion of the presentation, the commissioners voted 5-0 to approve the schematic design.