A handful of Shelby County Commissioners toured a closed juvenile facility in Southeast Memphis on Wednesday, Feb. 12, accompanied by sheriff’s office and other county officials who were there to help them see the property’s potential.

The county is contemplating the purchase of the Core Civic Shelby Training Center at 3420 Old Getwell Road as an alternative to building a new juvenile detention center on Adams Avenue.

The commissioners saw wide hallways, an enormous gym, space for classrooms, vocational training, an outdoor courtyard, baseball field and room for outdoor recreational activities at a cost that would be significantly lower than the $25 million budgeted for a new building.

“We’re just kind of considering our options,” Commissioner Brandon Morrison said. “I see potential in operating a facility that would enable the youth to have training that they might not now be receiving.”

Commission Chairman Mark Billingsley has seen the property before.

“I really like it. I like the location; I like the large amount of classrooms,” Billingsley said. “It has really good basic functions.”

Commissioner David Bradford, a facility engineer in design and construction, was looking beyond the mere size of the building.

“People are walking around looking at this and I’m thinking about the electrical and the HVAC and just thinking about what it’s going to take to get this up to something that can be very useful,” Bradford said.

County Mayor Lee Harris and Sheriff Floyd Bonner have discussed the possibility of renovating the training center to house juveniles in the detention center and those whose cases have been sent to adult court. They are now housed at the Jail East women’s facility.

Bonner also said a new federal law gives communities until December 2021 to move those juveniles out of adult detention facilities and into spaces for juveniles.

Plans for new youth detention center up in air amid talk of renovation

The total cost to buy and renovate the training center is between $14 million and $16 million, said Dwan Gilliom, county CAO.

That includes $3.4 million to buy the property, a figure that was first discussed two years ago, Gilliom said.

The property — near the old Tall Trees juvenile detention facility — is owned by Core Civic, which was formerly Corrections Corporation of America. It has been closed for 10 years.

The 85,626 square-foot building sits on 10.8 acres — green space the young people in juvenile custody don’t have now.

Assistant Chief Deidra Bridgeforth is in charge of Jail East and juvenile detention and said when she first saw the property, “it was like a dream.”

An oak tree won’t grow in a pot, Bridgeforth said.

“If you put it in the ground it has room to grow,” she said.

The larger space will reduce stress and trauma, she said, and give the juveniles the outdoor spaces that don’t exist at Jail East or at the existing juvenile facility.

In addition, there are volunteers who provide services and others who would like to do so, but the current building has no dedicated room for them.

“The community wants to help, but we don’t have the space,” Bridgeforth said.

“We’re just saying, please give us something where the kids can go outside and play, where they can have enough classrooms, where they can really get their education,” said Debra Fessenden, chief policy adviser in the sheriff’s office.

Still, not everyone on the tour was enthusiastic about the building’s potential.

Josh Spickler, executive director of the criminal justice reform nonprofit Just City, continues to be concerned that more space might result in more children in custody.

“I think that it’s problematic that we’re looking at a new facility before we address the procedural problems in our juvenile justice system that result in so many children being detained in the first place,” Spickler said.

He has noted the differences in the number of children Shelby County detains, compared to Davidson County.

Question of new or renovated juvenile detention center could renew debate over size

However, county officials said there are no plans to use the 200 beds available and that the eight pods would be reconfigured to accommodate 16 juveniles, for a total of 128 young people.

Chief Jailer Kirk Fields said that Wednesday, there were 73 juveniles in detention and 45 transfers at Jail East.

“The goal is not to fill it up,” Bridgeforth said. “I want to go out of business.”