Guilford County Sheriff Danny Rogers has been waiting a long, long time to see his Sheriff’s Department get a shiny new headquarters, and it became clear at the Guilford County Board of Commissioners meeting on Thursday, July 13 that he and his administrative staff will have to wait a lot longer.
The board did hire a new Construction Manager At Risk (CMAR) at the meeting. However, the county and the CMAR still have to work out the cost of the project and the details of the final agreement.
At the meeting, Guilford County Facilities Director Eric Hilton said that it could be December before those preliminary acts take place, and then, from December of 2023, the construction could take another 18 months. Hilton said there was hope it won’t take quite that long, but he added that he didn’t want to overpromise.
That puts the opening in mid-2025 assuming no further delays from this point.
At the July 13 meeting, the Guilford County Board of Commissioners approved a contract worth $92,430 with Blum-WC, a Joint Venture of Greensboro-based Blum Construction and Winston-Salem-based WC Construction. Blum-WC will take off where a suddenly and mysteriously halted contract with Samet Corp. ended on Thursday, March 2, 2023. That is, Blum-WC will oversee the completion of the demolition of the old jail building, the construction of the new Sheriff’s Department office, as well as put a new parking lot where the Otto Zenke building now stands.
The Otto Zenke building is the current headquarters that the department has used for decades. It has had all sorts of problems including leaks, flooding, major foundational issues, snake infestation and even hauntings.
In a prepared statement released shortly after the vote, Chairman of the Board of Commissioners Skip Alston was upbeat.
“The Board directed staff to restart the solicitation process expeditiously, and I am pleased to see staff following through on that commitment,” he said. “A Joint-Venture company is a forward-thinking approach to project delivery and I look forward to seeing the team restart the new Law Enforcement Center construction and complete it in a timely manner.”
Alston may look forward to an expeditious process with completion in a timely manner. However, since Rogers and his department have already been waiting years, mid-2025 probably sounds like a date in a futuristic science fiction novel.
Yet Skip immediately gives money to his museum, with no accountability or say from our tax paying citizens.
Lol…still a cluster!
“However, the county and the CMAR still have to work out the cost of the project and the details of the final agreement.”
Are we no longer taking bids for construction projects? We hire the firm first and then together work out a price? This doesn’t seem right.
It’s right as long as a racist is running the county and the firms hired are black firms. Voters in Guilford County better wake up. Taxpayers will be paying for skips crap for years to come. Remember he said that he will vote for it as long as “ minorities get their fair share “ He’s making sure they do.
Maybe Zenke was haunted by Democrats.
You said that right. If things were in reverse, there would be demonstrations, protests, discrimination chants and much more. But Skip is taking care of the homeless problem, hahahaha. Hopefully the next election will get a Professional Sheriff in office to bring Guilford County back to respectability, Still 100 vacancies, a detention officer being charged with a Felony, and Deputies being over worked due to the shortages. As long as the Democrat have control everyone will continue to suffer.