Graham Jaehnig/Daily Mining Gazette Elevatus Architecture jail designers Douglas Dukes (left) and John Pollack, spoke to the Houghton County Jail Committee last week on services they might offer on jail designs for the county.

HOUGHTON – At its May 14 meeting, the Houghton County Jail Committee heard from Douglas Dukes and John Pollack, both retired sheriffs and representatives of Elevatus Architecture, a firm in Fort Wayne, Indiana that designs jails.

Dukes and Pollack were invited by Jail Committee member Valorie Troesch to address the committee on what services they could supply in its efforts to design a jail plan that the Houghton County public could support.

Dukes told the committee Elevatus specializes in designing county jails. Elevatus’ approach, he said, is prototyping designs, and cited the Branch County, Michigan jail the firm designed.

Pollack invited Houghton County Sheriff Josh Saaranen to tour the facility.

“You can actually go down and see how that’s going to be staffed and say ‘this operation will work good here.'”

The sheriff, he said, could then identify features he likes, modifications he would prefer, and arrive at a design that fits the county’s needs.

“That’s a nice thing about a prototype,” Pollack said. “We can expand and contract a little bit to help you out.”

This approach skips the “blank sheet” start of design, which can be time consuming to carry out and confounding to a sheriff who can see what is “wrong” with a jail that is not suitable to him, but who would be confounded with a “from the ground up” design starting with a blank page.

Faith Morrison, advocate for addressing the Houghton County Jail, asked if local contractors were employed in the construction of the jail.

Pollack replied that while the construction contractor was not local, it hired local subcontractors.

“All our cement, all our heating, all our electrical was all done by local firms,” he said, adding that was one of the conditions of the contract.

Dukes asked if the new Houghton County facility is to include a district courtroom, saying that will make a huge difference in the cost.

“If it’s where trials are held,” he said, “it will have to have separate bathrooms, a judge’s security room, and other considerations.”

Saaranen said the current jail does not contain public bathrooms and currently inmates are taken from the jail outside, into the court house, through public hallways into the upstairs courtrooms.

Duke said any facility design must be planned with the safety of the staff, officials, and the public as the first priority.