Delaware County Justice Center

Client: Delaware County Commissioners

Budget: $4,885,772

Completed:  December 2020

Details: The former Wilson Middle School in Muncie, Indiana was just recently repurposed as Delaware County’s new justice center. The newly renovated and expanded building would have 500 beds to alleviate an overcrowding  issue that had plagued the county for decades.  In the past, inmates have been required to sleep on the floor  or be transferred to another county’s jail. The economic impact of county transfers was costing the county hundreds of thousands of dollars annually.   

The new justice center was also designed with the future in mind. The old natatorium has the ability to further expand the inmate capacity should the need arise. The approximately 260,000 square foot facility will also be the new home of the sheriff’s department, courts, and other county offices. The new Delaware County Justice Center will be able to serve the community for decades to come.

James Babcock, Inc was selected to assist in the design and build of the new Delaware County Justice Center. The facility consisted of 212,000 square feet of the existing Wilson Middle School and a 48,000 square foot addition of a new detention pod. The project had an overall budget of $45 million of which the electrical and systems portion was about 10%. This project required electrical, telecommunications, access control, CCTV, and HVAC controls work.

As with all projects, coordination was key. We worked directly with the project engineer to determine to what extent the existing electrical infrastructure could be reused and then assisted in determining the additions that would be required.  Ultimately, we ended up expanding the building’s emergency system by adding a 800kW diesel generator.

There was also quite a bit of site work to be completed on this project.  Most of the concrete bases and light poles were reused, but the poles were retrofitted for the installation of new LED lights.  Some of the pole bases were required to be removed for the addition of the new detention pod, but the poles were reused for the new parking lot added for judge-only parking.  Three gate locations were also added for employee-only access.