HERNANDO, Miss. (AP) - A Southaven builder has been awarded an $8.3 million contract for a 268-bed expansion of the new DeSoto County Jail.
Murphy and Sons’ bid was approved Monday by the board of supervisors, according to The Commercial Appeal (https://bit.ly/1i5hNQC ).
“We’re ready to go,” Sheriff Bill Rasco said of the plan to house all adult inmates in the jail when the expected 14 months of construction ends in the summer of 2015.
Murphy’s bid was among four opened on April 10.
The initial process, with bid opening on Jan. 16, had to be voided and all steps repeated due to a publication error. Murphy’s offer of $7.9 million was the lowest among six bids opened then, but the firm and the next-lowest bidder had to withdraw due to what county officials called computation errors, leaving the lowest acceptable bid that of Flintco, builder of the jail’s $14 million, 270-bed first phase.
Flintco did not submit an offer in the rebid.
“It went smoothly,” said Supervisor Harvey Lee of Hernando.
Consultant Michael Childress with the Memphis architectural-design firm Evans Taylor Foster Childress said, “if we can come back with a contract in about two weeks, then allow 10 days - heaven forbid - for any protests and then issue notice to proceed, we should see construction starting somewhere from middle to late May.”
Rasco said the new pod is basically inmate lodging.
“We already have the infrastructure in place, such as kitchen, laundry and intake. We factored in room for growth over the next 25 years when we built the first phase,” which opened in 2012.
The expansion will bring in all remaining adults from the old jail in downtown Hernando “so it will only be for juveniles and their court facilities,” said Rasco. “That’s our goal, to keep them separate from the adult population.”
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Information from: The Commercial Appeal, https://www.commercialappeal.com
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