News

JCAR cost spikes as county nears vote on Phase 1

JCAR, the Judicial Complex Addition & Renovation, includes a four-story courthouse addition.

By Bill Moss, Published: July 22, 2025

The two newest Henderson County commissioners expressed alarmed last week when they learned that the latest cost projection added more than $15 million to the price of the jail and courthouse expansion.

Already the costliest capital project in the county’s history, the jail addition and new four-story courthouse building are now projected to cost more than $170 million. Commissioners Sheila Franklin and Jay Egolf, both of whom took office in December after defeating incumbent commissioners in the May 2024 Republican primary, called for cuts.

“This is the first look at where you’re at with your construction-manager-at-risk and architect and our folks that work on these projects,” County Manager John Mitchell told commissioners. “We wanted to give the board the opportunity to look at these numbers. There are additional negotiations that need to happen.”

Tariffs, labor market drive inflation

Commissioners at their July 16 meeting reacted to the first solid number for the first phase of the project — the jail expansion — based on subcontractor’s bids and supply costs. The board voted to authorize JCAR, the Judicial Complex Addition & Renovation, in May 2024.

“The way that we viewed this moving forward is that our goal was to be in that $158 million realm for the project as a whole,” Assistant County Manager Christopher Todd told commissioners. “Today, with both real and estimated numbers, we’re sitting about $15 million higher than that.”

John Albro, senior project director at the Haskell Co., which in partnership with Hendersonville-based Cooper Construction is construction manager at risk, said global and political events are driving up costs.

“You’re trying to crystal-ball forecasts where things are going to be,” he said. “We’re trying to go to market and make purchases in a situation now where every time you turn around you have a different global item impacting things. We’ve got tariffs, we’ve got labor shortages due to various things that are happening in the news. All of that impacts how the market responds to the project. When we priced this initially, it was two years ago, and it was based on starting the project toward the end of last year. A lot of things have changed since then that simply weren’t forecastable.”

‘$20 million is huge’

Egolf asked whether Henderson County owned the architectural plans, suggesting that a new round of bids might be in order.

Board Chair Bill Lapsley, who managed many large construction projects in his career as civil engineer, mounted a strong defense of the process and the work the Haskell-Cooper team has done.

“We have paid them a fee to go out into the marketplace for the detention center and solicit competitive bids, which they have done,” he said. “And so we have a fixed price, a guaranteed maximum price, for the detention center. To suggest that we take the architects’ drawings and get another contractor to go out and get competitive bids again … If we were to do that, No. 1, this board would have an additional fee from whoever that contractor is.

“And second, it seems to me we would only do that if we have some reasonable reason to suspect that the competitive bids that this contractor received are incorrect or inflated. In my construction experience, I have not seen anything in the work that they’ve done that would indicate to me that these bids are inflated or in error or could be reduced without a major change in the design.”

“From my perspective, what we have in front of us is a competitive bid based on good accurate design drawings.”

Lapsley and commissioners Michael Edney and Rebecca McCall have been on the board during presentations, discussions and votes about the project over several years. Egolf or Franklin were not on the board at the time.

“I know costs go up every month, but $20 million is just huge.” Franklin said, referring to the cost jump for the overall project. “You can understand my concern. Twenty-million dollars is like another facility for us.”

‘Need is going to increase exponentially’

District Attorney Andrew Murray and Clerk of Court J. Tyler Ray urged commissioners to complete the project.

“I’m here really to ask you to stay the course,” Murray said. “We’re in much need of space. As we continue to grow and as we continue to see crime, and I can’t handle it, they’re just going to sit there, right? I need to be able to move them through and to move them out to DOC (Department of Corrections) or out of the facility.”

Ray said the services that take place in a courthouse far surpass criminal prosecution.

“Anybody that’s got their eyes open and is out here on the highway riding around with the traffic that’s in this community knows that the need is going to increase here exponentially,” he said. “The courthouse is not all about the jail and the criminal process. It is a lot about that, but it’s where people from all walks of life in the community who are having a crisis with their family, who have had the death of a loved one, who are having a crisis in their business, come to solve their problems. It doesn’t just involve the jail. But an increased need at the jail directly translates into an increased need at the courthouse. And that’s the bottom line.”

Mitchell drew the discussion to a close by recommending that the Lapsley and Edney, who have been county commission’s liaison to the architects, engineers, contractors and county staff for JCAR, “meet with the contractor, talk about some of those items that have just been alluded to,” hunt for cost trims “and come back with that package.”

Commissioners face a tight timeline to act. The guaranteed maximum price will be on their agenda at their Aug. 4 meeting; subcontractor and supply bids that make up the GMP are good for only 60 days.