Weeminuche Construction Authority — the Ute Mountain Ute firm that recently completed an $8 million detention center in Towaoc — was chosen Wednesday by the Montezuma County commission to construct a new county jail in Cortez.

The tribal-owned company submitted the lowest bid to build the 112-bed facility, and will do so for $4,591,772.

"We are really looking forward to it," said Robin Halverson, general manager for Weeminuche. "We just finished a jail here, so the building crew is very experienced for the job. It will be state-of-the-art security."

The contract to build the facility, financed by a 0.45-cent county sales tax overwhelmingly approved by voters last November, requires completion within 450 days, or by October 2001.

Construction is slated to begin on July 17 on a lot north of the Justice Building at the corner of Mildred Road and Empire Street. Don Flaugh was named the project manager.

In April, the county commissioners rejected all bids submitted by Weminuche, FCI Constructors, Inc., and Maxam Construction, of Leewood, Kan., because all the bids came in well over the $5 million budget set by the county.

Rather than negotiate with the bidders, the commission opted to rebid a less expensive project. Planners cut the size of the basement, which included a gun-training range and storage, from 20,000 square feet to 3,000. Actual jail space, however, will remain the same in the new plan. Also, a $200,000 geothermal heating/cooling system was nixed in favor of a more standard, less costly one.

"The original would have saved us $600 a month in heating and cooling costs," said Tom Weaver, county administrator. "But in the long term we would have paid back a lot more in interest, so it wasn’t worth it."

Nationwide the prison industry is booming, and southwest Colorado is seeing some of that trend. In the last two years, both Ute tribes have constructed new detention facilities, and Durango built a new juvenile detention center. Halverson plans to spread the wealth in the Cortez region.

"We’re sure hoping to use locals" for subcontracting, she said.

The old facility will be remodeled into a 70-bed community-corrections and rehabilitation center, Weaver said. It will be used to house non-violent criminals, the county work-release program and a detox center.

The sales-tax increase for the new jail will finance a $6.25 million bond that will be paid off in no more than 20 years, at which time the sales tax sunsets. Approximately $300,000 of that will be used to remodel the current jail. Bidding for that project will not occur until the new facility is well under way.