FAYETTEVILLE — New treadmills and elliptical bikes are still in the boxes waiting to be set up in a new fitness center available for all Washington County employees.
Delmer Ferrell, the physical fitness instructor for the Washington County Sheriff’s Office, said there’s no reason to set them or other new weight and workout equipment up in the current fitness center on the second floor of the east wing of the sheriff’s office. Before long, the center will have a new home.
Three years worth of grant funding totaling nearly $390,000 will pay for a new 7,200-square-foot training facility for the sheriff’s office, said Wayne Blankenship, the county’s grants administrator. The money will came from the U.S. Bureau of Justice Assistance through its State Criminal Alien Assistance Program.
The program provides federal payments to states and localities that incurred correctional officer salary costs for incarcerating undocumented criminal aliens who have felony or misdemeanor convictions for violations of state or local laws.
The project qualified for the grant funding because it will be used for training the detention center and its staff, Blankenship explained. The project will be advertised for contractor bids in January and engineers estimate construction will be completed within nine months, officials said.
Ferrell, a volunteer who also serves as the sheriff’s office chaplain, said about half the new building will house the new fitness center. Sign-in sheets for the current fitness center shows between 250 and 300 monthly workouts, some of which include people who have worked out more than once, Ferrell said.
The new fitness facility will have more usable space and include showers, something not available now, he said. He’s hoping the new space will increase the number of people who use the facility.
“It will be good for all the employees and it’s going to be handy,” Ferrell said. “We’ll be able to move in with several new pieces of machinery that we did not have before.”
Capt. Richard Murphy said that the sheriff’s office needs office space “real bad.”
“We want to build this building so we can free up these upstairs for offices,” he said.
The new facility will provide a better place for the sheriff’s office’s many training activities, he said.
“We do a lot of training — everything from (serving) civil papers to firearms,” Murphy said.
The new building will also have a garage door that provides an indoor facility to conduct training on vehicle stops, Murphy said. Now, officers have to do that training outdoors, he said.
Washington County Road Department employees recently started preliminary site work for the new training and fitness facility.
The county is able to save money on its construction projects by doing part of the work itself, officials said.
“Anytime we have a project that requires work that the road department does, we ask them if they have the time to do it so we can save money,” said Dan Short, the county’s chief of staff.
The road department has also been doing site work recently for a new storage building planned for the county’s Department of Emergency Management vehicles and equipment, officials said.
Fast Facts
Training Facility
What: New 7,200-square-foot training facility for the Washington County Sheriff’s Office and fitness center for all county employees.
When: Site work under way; bids to be advertised in January.
Where: Near the sheriff’s office facilities on the county’s south campus on Clydesdale Drive.
Cost: Estimated by engineers at $350,000.
Who pays: Grants from the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program.
Source: County Officials, Staff Report