PORT HURON TWP. – In just about any Western movie – or in fictional Mayberry, North Carolina – the jail cells are usually made up of brick walls with iron bars on the front, and the sheriff’s desk isn’t far away so he can see what the bad guys are up to.

Prison construction had moved away from that concept, with some designs having jail cells constructed in long rows that make it difficult for keepers to see what inmates are doing.

Planners of the new St. Clair County Detention and Intervention Center like the idea of having a direct line of sight on prisoners, and that’s one of the central design themes behind the $32 million facility that’s currently under construction. General contractor Project Control Systems, Inc. (PCSI) and the building trades have completed about 20 percent of the facility.

“We’ve had a wet spring, but the site is finally starting to dry out,” said PCSI’s George Wagner, Jr., who is co-superintendent on the project along with Mark Reaume. “The weather has slowed us down a bit, but everything else has been great – it’s been a safe job, and the workers and the project labor agreement with the trades have worked really well for us.”

The new Detention and Intervention Center sits on eight acres of a 23-acre site a few miles off of I-94. The 200,000 square-foot building will provide 384 adult beds and 70 juvenile beds, and will replace the existing St. Clair County Jail in Port Huron and the Juvenile Detention Center in Fort Gratiot. The new facility will also house the St. Clair County Sheriff’s Department and a mental and physical health assessment center.

The existing jail, which has 134 beds, was built in the 1950s and is completely outmoded. Heat for the facility is generated and transferred from a court building across the street, and conduit feeding the jail is so packed that even a phone wire can’t be fed through. And with a shortage of beds, St. Clair County inmates have been transferred for incarceration to other facilities around the state.

St. Clair County Sheriff’s Major Tom Torrey, who oversees the jail, told the Port Huron Times-Herald that the new facility will utilize a “direct jail supervision” of putting jailers in pods to watch prisoners, which will replace the current “linear system” of jail cells in a row.

Before groundbreaking on the new Detention and Intervention Center last summer, the St. Clair County Commission had studied the issue for about five years. Building trades union representatives were extremely active in the planning and public hearings phase, and their influence – as well as input from local workers – helped arrange the implementation of a union-only project labor agreement on the job.

Steve Ellery of Painters Local 1474 sat on the county commission when the PLA was approved 7-0. He subsequently lost a re-election campaign, but is running again for St. Clair County Commissioner later this year. “It’s very important that this project goes smoothly, so that project labor agreements can be used on future county construction,” he said. “We want a great building to show the county that PLAs work.”

There are about 60 construction workers on the project, a number which should peak out at 200 in the coming months. Under construction on some old baseball fields, the building is expected to open in about a year.

PCSI’s Reaume said pre-cast concrete is being used extensively on this project, with trucks bringing in the material from where it’s manufactured in Kalamazoo. But the aforementioned jail pods are being manufactured in Georgia, and then shipped via railroad and then flatbed truck to the jobsite.

“I believe they come completely finished, with furniture and everything, and when they get here, we just drop them in place,” Reaume said. “It’s like stacking blocks. Then the local tradespeople hook up the mechanical. They’re building jails like this all over the country.”

CONDUIT THAT WILL SERVE the eletrical needs of the St. Clair County Detention and Intervention Center are installed by Ron Mason, left, and Tom Kaminski of Electrical Workers Local 58 and Power Systems Electric.

PLUMBING A SHOWER ROOM for officers at the St. Clair County Detention and Intervention Center is Eric Bloch of Plumbers 98 and Watson Bros.