Cass County Commissioner Dave Arnold is optimistic that construction will start soon on a new drug treatment center.

“In the next six months you’re going to see bids come in and construction down there, I am almost certain of that,” Arnold said.

In June the commissioners decided to table the project at 520 High St. after receiving three bids ranging from $791,000 to $1.79 million, all well above the county’s construction estimate of $500,000 to $600,000.

At Monday’s commissioner’s meeting the commissioner’s approved the facility’s first year operational costs of $720,000 and announced that bidding for the project would reopen in January when Arnold hopes the prices will be closer to the original estimate.

“Local construction companies are available for the work now,” Arnold said. “Last time when we opened bids everyone was busy. They are basically the people we would like to see build the project, and we think they will meet our estimate.”

In 2007, Cass/Pulaski Community Corrections received a $650,000 grant from the Indiana Department of Correction to turn the building at 520 High St. into a forensic treatment center. The facility will house 64 nonviolent offenders who are nearing the end of their sentences but are without appropriate housing to participate in a work-release program.

After paying architects for the design, there is about $580,000 left for the project.

Dave Wegner, director of Cass/Pulaski Community Corrections, said the amount was a little short of the original estimate, but he said he hoped some changes in the plan would bring the project in closer to these costs. If all goes as planned, the center might be ready for opening in July.

“We won’t know what numbers we’re dealing with until the bids are reviewed by the end of January,” Wegner said. “We’ve also done some scaling back, too, and the plan is at its bare bones. We can’t really cut anything else out.”

As part of the new plan, office space and classrooms for the center would move to the former Fastenal building at 512 High St. The move was necessitated by the new combined dispatch center’s location on the second floor of the corrections building.

Wegner said that there were some advantages to separating the facility.

“The space is separated from the offices which should make it more secure because the inmates will not have to walk through,” he said. “It is a much bigger space, which could also be used for county training programs.”

The treatment center cannot go ahead without space for offices and education and treatment facilities. With renovation costs and a completion date for the Fastenal building still unknown, Wegner said that the center may be forced to down-size its operations at least until sufficient funds can be secured.

“If a scenario came up where we couldn’t finish the treatment center we would cut out one of the dorms which we would use for the classrooms instead,” Wegner said. “Application costs should cover it, but if not, we would look to take out a long term loan for the Fastenal building and look to repay it when we can.”

Most of the long-term repayment would come from daily fees paid by the inmates assigned to the program.

Wegner was optimistic that the project would eventually get what it needs given the state’s desire to set up regional centers throughout the state. He added that it was thanks to the work of commissioners that Cass County’s project had reached this stage.

“The commissioners have been really good at solving the problems that we have had, and we’ve made up a lot of ground from where we were a year ago,” Wegner said. “We’ve been working on this for a couple of years now and now hopefully the funding is coming together.”

Kevin Smith can be contacted at (574) 732-5148 or via e-mail at kevin.smith@pharostribune.com