County Jail Could be Demolished, Making Way For New Development in Downtown Dallas

An overcrowded jail that’s not up to code is prompting Dallas County commissioners to contemplate demolishing and moving the facility — making way for prime real estate on the western edge of downtown Dallas.

Commissioners will appoint a committee next month to analyze the situation and make a recommendation within a year on whether to rehab the Lew Sterrett Justice Center facilities at 111 West Commerce Street or sell the land and find a new spot to house inmates. State law requires a county jail to be within four miles of downtown, County Judge Clay Jenkins said in a recent budget hearing. 

Dallas Planning and Urban Design Director Julia Ryan said the county jail site — in a great location near a job center and the Trinity River — is currently zoned as a planned development. Acknowledging that the recent discussions don’t equate to a done deal, Ryan said the site certainly has the potential to serve the community in another use. 

“What we’re doing with ForwardDallas [comprehensive land use plan] is looking at all the opportunities that are available,” Ryan said. “This could be an opportunity. We’d look at what sort of land use might be appropriate if that facility were to be demolished. We would look at the surrounding area and some of the other land uses. We’d look at what sort of transportation connections there are. There are a lot of things that go into the analysis as to whether this might be good for housing.” 

Dallas County Jail Has Issues

There are a lot of challenges at play in the Dallas County Jail saga, including home evictions that have backed up the court system since the COVID-19 pandemic, felony cases that aren’t being prosecuted in a timely manner leaving the accused to languish in lockup, and mental health patients being housed in the jail rather than hospitalized or offered treatment. 

The backlog in the county courts at law, primarily due to evictions and related appeals, will cost Dallas County about $1.7 million in staff and equipment to create a “backlog court,” according to a memo issued Sept. 6 by county policy analyst Hector Faulk. 

While commissioners are looking into all the challenges and seeking legislative assistance, the jail problem needs a solution within the next five years, Commissioner Elba Garcia said. 

Commissioner John Wiley Price added that the county jail and court systems are in “dire circumstances.” 

Houston is spending $26 million sending inmates to Louisiana and West Texas because their jail is at capacity, Price said. Dallas County is fast approaching its limit. 

“I want the judges to consider what is going on in Bexar County with Senate Bill 6, is the magistrate’s ability to set a bond on a felony case,” Price said in a Sept. 6 meeting of Dallas County Commissioners Court. “As of Friday, we had almost 1,000 individuals that are in custody that have felonies not filed. What that means is those individuals on an average of 26 days are staying in our system at a cost of $1.4 million every month.”

The accused are in a “detention early warning bucket” waiting on a felony not filed, Price explained. Most of them have non-violent offenses related to substance abuse. And those who are waiting to go to court aren’t necessarily going to be released from custody after 26 days; they’re just waiting to go to another bucket. 

“The district attorney is helpless. He can’t do it. We’ve gone down a number of roads,” Price said. “I’m just sounding the alarm.”

While county officials get that sorted out, there’s a related matter we’re keeping an eye on at CandysDirt.com: A big plot of land that could be used for housing. 

Solving The Dallas County Jail Problem 

Dallas County Jail has a capacity of about 7,200 inmates and is about 88 percent full, commissioners said. Portions of the jail website, much like the jail itself, have not been updated in more than a decade. 

“We looked at the warrant file on Friday, and there are 71,000 warrants in the warrant file,” Price said. “Let’s say it’s [31,000]. We still don’t have enough beds.”

The county sheriff’s department operates six detention facilities and employs about 1,450 officers, according to a recent budget presentation. The sheriff’s department budget is about $194 million per year, with $144 million allocated for jail operations. 

“This is continuing to mount,” Price said. “We’ve got to manage this population. We cannot continue at this rate.” 

The Lew Sterrett Justice Center on West Commerce Street, adjacent to the Frank Crowley Courts Building, is a complex of buildings including the North Tower, the West Tower, and Suzanne Lee Kays Detention Facility. Most of the facilities were built in the 1980s, with the newest addition, the Kays building, constructed in 2008. 

The Sterrett complex is surrounded by the abandoned Dawson State Jail and a large parking lot to the south and an empty, undeveloped lot to the north. The site is between the city’s Calatrava bridges and was once considered a potential site for the Texas Rangers baseball team, Judge Jenkins told WFAA. 

Prime Real Estate

The mounting costs to house inmates might be better spent on demolishing the jail and building a new one, county officials suggested earlier this month. 

“If you’ve ever redone an old building or old house, sometimes that can be as expensive to fix up and build as a new one,” Jenkins told WFAA following discussions about the committee to oversee a potential jail demolition. “I’m interested to hear what the public has to say. It will be a very thoughtful process.”

Developer Monte Anderson — who has no dog in the fight — said it’s interesting to think about much-needed housing going up on the hundreds of acres of land downtown, but he’s generally against destroying buildings. 

“Even if it costs more [to rehabilitate], I don’t know how we can do that,” Anderson told CandysDirt.com. “At what point do we stop loading up our landfills with old buildings? From an environmental standpoint, we have to renew our resources. I believe in repurposing buildings. We’re tearing down our history. We’d have a much more interesting place if we would work with what we have.”

Ryan said the city’s land use perspective involves looking at the surrounding area. 

“We’re looking at publicly-owned properties as land use for the whole city,” she said. “There are some other buildings around there, like the courthouse. Are there other community services that might be appropriate there? We want to look at the highest and best use if the whole area were to redevelop. Other cities like Fort Worth have used the Trinity River with a lot of trail development. You have the downtown views. There are a lot of things we look at to make those determinations, and we would work with the county to make those decisions.” 

History Repeats Itself?

Redeveloping a former detention center site has been done before in Dallas County. 

Developer Mehrhad Moayedi with Centurion American bought the iconic $8.1 million Cabana Motor Hotel in 2017. Before the 10-story hotel on Stemmons Freeway hosted the Beatles, it was a county detention center. 

Developed in 1962 by Las Vegas developer Jay Sarno of Caesar’s Palace fame, the building is evidence that a former jail can certainly be repurposed. 

Prior to Sarno’s purchase, the site was vacant for many years and was ultimately listed by the City of Dallas as surplus property. 

Moayedi submitted a detailed plan to reinvigorate the historic structure with entertainment and conference facilities and a residential component, but the project was delayed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Moayedi and Centurion American representatives did not immediately respond to requests for the current project status.