Grant County Jail tackles growth, overcrowding in rural Washington
By Kat Balster
Photo Credit: Lydig
In the heart of central Washington, Grant County boasts 300 days of sunshine a year and a population swell with each festival season. As tourists flock to the area to attend events at the nearby Gorge Amphitheater, the county also sees a related increase in its jail population. The problem has plagued the community and strained the facility for decades.
The Grant County Jail was built in the 1980s and was outdated the moment it opened. It had been designed for just 85 inmates and rapidly outgrew its capacity. By the time modifications were made in the ‘90s to bring the number of beds to 195, the county’s need had doubled again.
“We outgrew [the old jail] on day one,” said Kriete. “Our county was growing faster than we could keep up with at our current size.”
Overcrowding and restricted bookings continued to be the norm for years.
“There were people we couldn’t even arrest because we didn’t have the bed space; thousands of warrants that we couldn’t serve,” Kriete added.
A Community-Led Solution
In 2016, when Kriete was the chief deputy of corrections for Grant County, he started to attend town halls with the previous sheriff to hear from residents directly about their concerns. The community was clear and unified in their dissatisfaction with the current situation. This input shaped what eventually became the voter-supported solution for the jail. With summer tourism and the Gorge Amphitheater drawing tens of thousands of visitors to the region each year, a sales tax made sense.
“A lot of those visitors also use our jail facility. We couldn’t find a better way to share the expense with everybody that uses the jail than a sales tax,” Kriete said with a bit of humor. “So, we went out with a three-tenths of a percent sales tax, and it passed with over 60% support.”
The widespread support also set the tone for the project.
“It was almost like having a mandate from the voters,” said Tom Gaines, who led construction for Grant County. “Once it was passed, we knew we had to deliver.”
Rural Doesn’t Mean Simple
Photo Credit: Rendering by Clemons Rutherford Architects, courtesy of Lydig
The project had momentum, but construction in a rural environment came with unique headaches, starting with site selection. After several rejected options, the county pivoted to an old racetrack outside of the city.
“[The site] wasn’t in the urban growth area,” said Gaines. “We had to get it annexed, run water and sewer [lines] across private lands and figure out how to get power to the site. That meant becoming a developer in every sense. We created a developer’s agreement with the city, brought in utilities and even coordinated extensions for other public uses like the [public utilities district]. It took teamwork.”
Lydig construction, the project’s construction manager at-risk (CMAR), then had to execute the vision.
“There was a lot of confusion between city and county [about] who was inspecting, what fire district we were in,” said Marc Seebarger, senior project manager with Lydig. “That kind of coordination, especially running utilities through multiple properties, can be a nightmare if you don’t have partners who are brought in.”
Temporary power and water came online just in time to keep the project on schedule, and when the county sold adjacent land to the public utilities district, the groundwork was already in place for their new service center.
Designing for the Present and the Future
Jail design was led by Clemons Rutherford & Associates (CRA), with Will Rutherford serving as senior project architect. Rutherford took rural realities and operational efficiency into account from the beginning.
“They were so deficient in beds,” Rutherford said. “They were housing only the most severe cases. There was no room for mental or behavioral health, no space for classification. This project was a chance to make a real impact.”
CRA’s design philosophy focused on reducing movement, improving flow and supporting classification without expanding staffing needs.
“Movement means money; movements mean staff,” Rutherford said. “So, our design had to minimize both, while still being secure and safe for staff and inmates.”
One of the most intentional design moves was separating intake from release.
“We always design with an in and an out. You never want someone walking back through booking after serving time,” said Rutherford. “That invites problems.”
Building for Health
A nurse triage station is included in intake to allow screening before inmates go to housing, verifying they are medically stable.
“The location [in Grant County] that has the highest concentration of sick individuals is our jail, not the hospital,” Kriete said. “It’s a serious issue.”
Like in many rural counties, Grant County’s jail is also the county’s default mental health facility. As such, the 512-bed facility accounts for mental and behavioral health needs, without the county having to operate psychiatric housing.
“[The county is] not equipped to retain psychiatric patients long-term,” Rutherford said. “But [the county jail] can safely hold them temporarily and transfer them to the state, which is the right approach for a county of this size.”
Partnerships with organizations like RENEW Grand County Mental Health are essential as well. The organization has embedded a crisis responder inside the jail and helped launch a recovery coach program to support reentry.
“When someone has that moment of clarity inside the jail, there’s someone there to grab their hand and walk them through the recovery process,” Kriete said. “That warm handoff makes all the difference.”