Grays Harbor County is looking to fund another study that would suggest as new facility to address jail overcrowding.

The county commissioners on Jan. 29, approved advertising a request for qualifications for engineering services.

The facility may or may not combine juvenile and adult jail services, and the study would need to include jail and staffing projections, growth projections, a phasing schedule for development, detailed construction estimates, a timeline, recommendations for funding and a recommendation of the best approach for the county’s criminal justice facilities.

In the recent past, the jail has dealt with overcrowding. It’s an ongoing issue that depends on the amount of crime during any one given time period. The county juvenile facility is built in a flood zone.

Currently, the county is expecting a price tag estimated at about $25 million.

The new facility also would be expected to fit into the current Montesano campus footprint. The facility would be constructed where the old jail is, and also would take up the parking lot, the elections office and facilities building, utility and facilities director Mark Cox said.

“That may require us to tear down structures to fit it here,” Cox said. “We’re not looking to build it off site and transport inmates because that would be too costly.”

Cox said another similar project in Skagit took about 10 years to complete after the initial requests were advertised.

“I think all of us here would like to see a facility sooner rather than later, but there is a potential it could be that long,” Cox said.

The county currently is paying bonds for the courthouse, but once those are paid off the county might be able to move forward Cox said.

“We have a few more years of paying off the bonds and that will help our borrowing capacity,” Cox said.

A potential campus revision project proposed in 2015 — which included improvements to the jail and moving the juvenile facility into a new facility on the old jail’s footprint — would have cost the county $50 million.

“That was basically moving everything (all county services) up here,” Cox explained. “(The jail improvements) were more of a vertical option which we’ve found, with elevators, that’s not the best choice. And it takes so much more staff to do a vertical facility.”

The county soon will pay $164,000 to modernize the elevator at the current county jail.

Cox said the county is looking at horizontal designs that would involve a central command area and a pod structure for inmates.

The old jail could be remodeled for office space for the Sheriff’s Office.

Through a public/private partnership with Public Facilities Investment Corporation, the county is planning to build the facility and then set up a land lease.

Cox said the entire project is in its “infancy.”