It’s been a very long time coming and a twisty road to get to this point.
The Guilford County Sheriff’s Office is finally moving into its new administrative headquarters at 401 W. Sycamore St. in downtown Greensboro.
Guilford County Sheriff Danny Rogers announced this week that the transition is officially underway and also that – after decades of bouncing between aging buildings and makeshift arrangements – the Sheriff’s Office will soon have a modern centralized home.
According to the announcement from the Sheriff’s Office, the Otto Zenke Building at 400 W. Washington Street will no longer be open to the public after December 8 – and several major divisions will move into the Sycamore Street building in phases. For decades, top Sheriff’s Office leaders have complained mightily about the old deteriorating building that was uneven, subject to flooding, had a snake infestation at one time and there were even stories that the building was haunted.
Those divisions that will be in the new building include the Executive Command Staff, Personnel and Training, Legal Process, Resource Management, Professional Standards, and the Sheriff’s Office legal team.
During the transition, the Legal Process Division might see some delays with concealed-carry appointments and fingerprinting; however, civil-process service and concealed-carry renewal drop-offs will continue without interruption; those services will stay in the courthouse until December 12.
Field operations and detention won’t be affected.
This move marks the end of one of Guilford County’s most contentious construction sagas in many years – a multi-year journey that began with big plans, hit a wall, blew up dramatically and publicly, and ultimately forced Guilford County back to the drawing board.
The long fight centered on the county’s 2023 contract with Samet Corp. to demolish the old downtown jail and build a new sheriff’s headquarters on that same block. The county awarded the contract to Samet in February of that year. The goal was ambitious: Tear down the decaying jail, which had flooded and leaked for years, and finally build the Sheriff’s Office a home that was not the Otto Zenke building and one that didn’t creak, bow or smell bad.
For decades, county commissioners and sheriffs had talked about the need for a modern headquarters. The Samet contract was supposed to be the moment when all that talk became action.
Instead, the project collapsed. Not long after awarding Samet the roughly $23.9 million contract, the Guilford County Board of Commissioners voted unanimously to terminate it. That vote, never fully explained to the public, followed a dispute over MWBE participation – minority- and women-owned business requirements – that spiraled into a full blown breakdown between the county and one of the region’s largest contractors.
According to Samet’s public statements at the time, the company had already secured more than 40 percent MWBE subcontractor participation, including more than 15 percent with Black-owned firms.
Some county officials who spoke off the record to the Rhino Times at the time said that a reprehensible comment by a Samet employee speaking about minority participation in the project led to the unanimous decision by the county to kill the contract even before phase 1 was totally complete.
Samet conducted an internal investigation into offensive comments made by an employee connected to the project. That employee was fired; however, the controversy didn’t end there.
The county never truly explained the mess, conducting all their discussions of the matter in closed-sessions. However, it was very clear to anyone watching that the commissioners believed that Samet had mishandled the situation badly enough that the relationship couldn’t continue.
The unanimous vote by the commissioners made that point. Samet, for its part, called the county’s demand unreasonable, did not rule out a lawsuit, and warned of rising costs and uncertainty for subcontractors.
After canceling Samet’s contract, Guilford County had to rebid the remainder of the project.
Inflation and redesigns left the county’s taxpayers with a much higher price tag. In early 2024, a joint venture led by Blum Construction won the contract at a guaranteed maximum price of about $27 million. That was after the county had already paid out millions to Samet for phase one.
More changes came later: Interior upgrades, added security features, design tweaks and efforts to preserve some materials from the old Zenke building – including wood paneling that commissioners wanted saved – pushed costs higher.
All the while, the Sheriff’s Office continued operating from a hodgepodge of outdated spaces. The Zenke building, which the county bought decades ago rather than build a purpose-built headquarters, was notorious for being dilapidated.
Previous Boards of Commissioners patched it, fixed walls and replaced windows, but the building always seemed one step behind utter deterioration.
Staff often joked that the Sheriff’s Office was spread across so many disconnected facilities that it was hard to remember which department was in which building.
This new headquarters changes that. Once the move is complete, nearly all major administrative and support functions will be under one roof. Training, legal process, command staff, internal affairs, logistics and hiring will be centralized. There will be no more sending applicants to one building for paperwork, another for fingerprints and a third for records.
The county’s hope – and the Sheriff’s Office’s as well – is that the consolidation will cut delays and improve the public’s experience.
