New criminal justice facility designed for future needs, safety

EPHRATA – More than 60% of voters approved a three-tenths of 1% sales tax increase to help fund a new Grant County Jail in 2019. Today, that jail is being realized with walls clearly visible to drivers that pass by the construction site on the southwest side of State Route 282 near the Ephrata Walmart.

“It’s not built for our current needs; it’s built for our needs for the next 40 years,” said Grant County Sheriff Joey Kriete during a Wednesday morning tour of the facility. “Grant County is predicted to be one of the fastest growing counties in the Pacific Northwest. We want to make sure that we have a facility that’s going to (keep) up with that growth.”

The jail has a maximum price tag of about $155.5 million and is being built by Lydig Construction, a company based in Spokane Valley with offices in Kennewick and Bellevue. Kriete said the company has been a good partner in the project with weekly meetings allowing county leadership to discuss progress and make changes as the project moves forward and they become aware of possible cost-effective improvements to the initial design for the facility such as upgrades to the ovens for the facility’s kitchen.

“We're here every Wednesday in their meetings providing that feedback. Today, we talked about some of the kitchen equipment that we may be able to change up. Okay, that's huge. So communication is huge,” Kriete said.

Calling the new facility simply a jail may be a bit of a misnomer. More accurately, it’s a justice center with a jail incorporated into it. The large, white, steel building visible from the roadway is one of the two housing facilities that will hold inmates. The buildings are broken up into several pods that allow corrections officers to separate inmates based on their circumstances, Kriete said. There will be two layers of cells in each building with a main control area in the center of the building. There will be both line of sight and video surveillance of inmates, allowing officers to monitor inmates to ensure both staff and inmate safety. How violent an offender may be, gang affiliation and other factors will determine which pod a prisoner is assigned to. Initial inmate capacity for the jail will be 512 beds, and the site and design allow the county to add two more buildings if growth in the county requires it.

“Hopefully, we won’t need those other 512 beds, right? Hopefully, this will be big enough and we’ll be able to stay with the current inmate population (capacity) with the current inmate population and issues we have in Grant County. You know you’re winning if you don’t have to expand,” Kriete said.

A new infirmary will also be incorporated into the new site. Kriete said inmates at the jail must be provided with medical care under the law. Staff are available to help them deal with a wide variety of issues such as mental health, withdrawals from controlled substances or injuries. If extensive care is needed that the jail can’t provide, which isn’t common, they can be transported to larger correctional facilities, but everything can be handled in-house for the most part.

A new administrative office for the Grant County Sheriff’s Office is part of the new facility as well. Kriete said the idea is to move GCSO administrative staff over to the new office that will be welcoming and approachable for the community. Area residents will be able to visit the jail for a variety of services such as applying for a concealed weapons permit, requesting court documents to be served and to get pointed toward community resources law enforcement is often a bridge to.

“It’s going to be really welcoming. It really is. The last thing you’re going to think when you come into the sheriff’s office in May of 2026 is, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m at the jail,’” he said.

Chief Deputy of Corrections Phillip Coats said he’s excited for his staff to have a new facility to work in. During a corrections officer’s career, working in a brand-new jail is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. It’s simply not a common occurrence and he feels the safety the new facility will add and the pride in the new facility will be good for his division. It may also help with recruitment, which is a challenge nationally for law enforcement in or out of a corrections facility.

“The thing that the (architects) built into this entire facility, they took the staffing concept in mind. I mean, they had an average of over 58,000 hours that corrections deputies spend inside of a jail throughout their career, right? And to hear an architect ramble those numbers on, to me it means that they’re taking the staff’s perspective into consideration in the overall build.”

Coats said that mindset will help with deputies’ health and well-being and he’s grateful for that benefit to his deputies.

From a staffing perspective, the jail may help with recruitment, but it will also help with retention, Kriete said. Both corrections deputies and patrol deputies, as well as specialized teams within GCSO, must maintain a certain number of training hours each year. The new justice center will have a training room that will support that effort. GCSO has trainers on staff and trainers that visit the county to host classes. Grant County’s central location in Washington is a draw for such activities among partner agencies across the state.

“The state requires us to have a certain amount of training annually to maintain our peace officer certification for all of our fully commissioned deputies,” Kriete said. “And now they’ve done the same thing with corrections and made it a certified profession, as it should be, and they’re also required to maintain a certain amount of hours of training.”

Kriete said GCSO works to provide more hours than required to make it convenient for officers and the training room being in the justice center will help with that effort.

Coats and Kriete said transitioning into the new facility is a key focus for GCSO staff as the jail progresses.

“What we’re also doing is we have a transition team,” Coats said. “The National Institute of Corrections came in a couple months ago and put together a great four-day course to a lot of specific corrections deputies. And, we have a transition team to make sure that the transition from the old facility into this facility is going to be as seamless as we possibly can, to make sure that we have our new processes in order (and) we know what to expect operating a much larger facility.”

Kriete said the NIC is also doing a staffing analysis to ensure GCSO knows what the staffing demands are going to be to operate the new facility in comparison to the current jail. The analysis is expected to be completed by the end of the year and will allow the department to adjust plans. The new facility may need more corrections deputies, but the same number of admin staff. Flow of inmates through the new prisoner entry will change the process, so intake deputies or other staff may be needed. The assessment will help identify those needs.

The community of Ephrata has benefitted from the project already, Kriete said. The road in front of the site has been improved and is set up to be able to be extended toward the southwest portion of town where growth in Ephrata is coming.

In an update from Tom Gaines, the county noted that sewer, water and reclaim piping had been installed to cross Dodson Road and tie into the Ephrata Wastewater Treatment Plant.

The city of Ephrata used the opportunity associated with that installation to lay piping beneath roadways that will eventually bring treated water to the Port of Ephrata for industrial use. Port Executive Director David Lanman told the Columbia Basin Herald that the reclaimed water will help draw businesses to the port – and subsequent jobs – because many businesses need that water for industrial purposes.

In the end, Kriete and Coats said the goal is to make the jail a facility that meets Grant County’s needs for decades.

“Grant County is the fastest growing county in the entire state, and it’s anticipated to continue that same growth pattern for the next six to eight years,” Coats said. “With that anticipated growth, there comes also the criminal side of things as well, right? So, we’re going to have the capacity to be able to accommodate that growth in the criminal element inside this jail.”

    Lydig Construction staff work on installing cinder blocks on the outside of the new Grant County Sheriff’s Office administration building in Ephrata. While the temperatures were a bit chilly, workers continued to push forward with the vertical build-up of the new center.
  

    Crews work on the central office most non-inmates will visit when they come to the new Grant County Sheriff’s Office which is expected to open in 2026.
  

    Chief Deputy of Corrections Phillip Coats discusses the benefits the new jail facility will have for his staff and for inmates, ensuring they are both safe and have a facility that meets the community’s needs.
  

    Workers use a variety of heavy equipment to move the construction of the new Grant County justice center along. The structure is made of steel, cement, plastic and other materials.
  

    The white building on the left in this photo is one of two that will be built to house inmates in multiple pods. The pods will have technology that allows the inmates to be closely monitored and walls that separate inmates based on risks of interaction with one another and officers.
  

    Lydig Construction workers install a crosspiece between steel supports for the second of two inmate housing buildings at the new justice center. The framework will be steel with larger girders like the one being lifted by the crane in the background supporting the building.
  

    Grant County Sheriff Joey Kriete explains aspects of the drawing being used to construct the new Grant County Jail. A lot of thought has gone into ensuring officer and inmate safety at the facility and that shows through in the design, he said.
  

    Crews move materials toward one of the slabs that will serve as the foundation for one of the two inmate housing blocs for the new Grant County Jail.