Joint Iowa City and Johnson County law enforcement facility could cost over $100 million

IOWA CITY — A joint law enforcement facility shared by the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office and the Iowa City Police Department could cost around $106 million, according to a feasibility study conducted by OPN Architects and Shive Hattery.

The 138,000 square foot facility would include a 140-bed jail, with the option to expand. It also would provide shared spaces for training, evidence, investigation and patrol efforts. The study reports the facility could be three or four stories, with the possibility of underground parking or a surface lot.

The feasibility study estimates a joint facility would save around 16,000 square feet of space and $9.4 million in construction costs, compared to the space needs and cost of each entity pursuing its own facility.

Neither Johnson County nor Iowa City has agreed to further pursue a shared law enforcement facility beyond the feasibility study. The study was conducted to explore the possibility for shared spaces and determine an estimated footprint of the building. It is not a final building plan.

The Johnson County Board of Supervisors plans to consider approval of a resolution in the next couple of weeks that would extend an invitation to the City of Iowa City to move forward with a joint project.

Both entities have space, safety concerns

Conversations about a joint facility began as both entities started to contemplate the future of their respective facilities. Both Johnson County and Iowa City completed space needs assessments of their facilities over the last two years.

The current county jail is overcrowded, posing safety concerns for both inmates and staff, and requiring that some inmates be housed at facilities outside Johnson County.

There’s been minimal conversation around expanding the current facility as Johnson County does not own the land adjacent to the current facility and Shive Hattery has said expansion is not a “viable” option.

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Iowa City’s police department is in a similar situation. Officials have said the department’s current space, which is housed within city hall, isn’t fit for long term use due to its age and overcrowding concerns.

“The police department hasn’t really expanded staff in quite some time. But even if we want to bring a couple civilians on — we're always talking about mental health needs — we have nowhere to put them. It's like Harry Potter situation with a cupboard under the stairs,” Iowa City Police Chief Dustin Liston said at a Criminal Justice Coordinating Committee meeting Thursday.

Potential location identified on Highway 6

A potential location for a new facility has been identified, where the Iowa City Transit Headquarters sit today, near the intersection of Riverside Drive and Highway 6. The city already owns that land and is in the process of developing a new transit facility, with the hopes of it being constructed in a new location.

The Iowa City Council has not voted on this proposal or committed to putting the land toward a future law enforcement facility.

“It's really an ideal location for a lot of reasons. One, it's centrally located in town in terms of response times. We have a major north-south Road, a major east-west road that we're on the corner of. And then the other really kind of ideal thing about it, a lot of the community concerns we sometimes have with first responders facilities are noise and lights and being adjacent to residential neighborhoods. There are no residential areas,” Michael Lewis, of Shive Hattery, said at the Criminal Justice Coordinating Committee meeting.

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Number of proposed beds in new jail

Last summer, Shive Hattery presented its initial space needs assessment to the county board of supervisors, calling for a $80 million facility with 140 beds, the same number presented in the joint facility study.

That space needs projection was made using population growth estimates for the next 30 years. However, some elected officials and community members have argued that there isn’t a need for a facility with more beds when crime in the county is on a downward trend.

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The board of supervisors has not made a decision on the first space needs assessment or the number of beds needed in a potential new facility.

County Sheriff Brad Kunkel has been in favor of a 140 bed proposal to alleviate the need to house inmates out of county.

When the current jail was opened in 1981, it was built with a capacity for 46 beds and the ability to add bunks to increase capacity to 92. Kunkel said the facility now operates at a capacity of 65 beds.

“That's just a number we've set internally as that's kind of our target population for this building based on the square footage that we have, the staff we have. … And also, once we start getting above that number, you're packing more people into small spaces and you start to see more problems, fights and other conflicts,” Kunkel previously told The Gazette.

Through June 2025, the county jail has averaged about 86 inmates per month, which includes those housed out of county and those wearing electronic monitors while on house arrest, according to county data. Between 2022 to 2024 the average was around 83 inmates per month.

The number of inmates on any given day can vary widely.

Potential bond in 2026

The Criminal Justice Coordinating Committee — a group formed last year — is proposing to put a bond issue before voters in November 2026 that would fund the project if approved.

The committee is made up of the Johnson County Board of Supervisors, county judicial officials, mental health professionals and policy advocates, Iowa City and Johnson County law enforcement, Johnson County residents and other criminal justice experts.

A joint county/city project referendum would require 50 percent approval from voters, as opposed to the 60 percent required if the county alone were to introduce a bond.

If the bond passes, it’s likely the construction bid wouldn’t go out until the middle of 2027. The feasibility study came up with the $106 million estimate assuming that construction schedule. Once ground is broken on a facility, it likely would take another two to three years before construction is completed.

The county has previously tried to finance jail improvements through bond referendums in 2012 and 2013. Both proposals received more than 50 percent approval from voters, but failed because they needed 60 percent to pass.

Comments: megan.woolard@thegazette.com

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