Cuyahoga County Justice Steering Committee officials are planning to pursue a shipping container storage yard at 2700 Transport Road as the site for its new jail photographed March 30, 2022.John Kuntz, cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio – After lengthy discussion in private, a committee overseeing plans to build a new jail was not ready to vote on a preferred location Tuesday and will return at a later date to finish.

The unexpected news came after the 12-member Justice Steering Committee spent two hours in executive session discussing use of a shipping container yard between Tremont and Cleveland’s Central neighborhood as a site for the new jail, along with other potential locations. When they emerged, project consultant Jeff Appelbaum said more conversation is needed and members agreed to resume another day.

A new meeting date has not been set.

“We just ran out of time,” Appelbaum later told cleveland.com.

Because executive sessions are confidential, committee members were reluctant to describe what exactly was discussed, but they agreed with Appelbaum’s assessment. Several members said they still had questions about the site and some of the concerns raised by the public over the first hour of their meeting, when 19 community members asked the committee not only to vote down the proposed industrial site, but to stop planning a new jail altogether.

Instead, residents proposed putting the estimated $550 million for the jail project toward affordable housing, diversion and other needed services they say would prevent incarceration in the first place.

The justice steering committee meeting to consider a location for the new jail will begin shortly and community members are calling on members to vote no. pic.twitter.com/NChA59j1Ub

The commenters said they don’t trust that the site can be remediated safely. They worry that inflation and price hikes during the pandemic will only cost them more money in building costs, if the project moves forward. And they aren’t convinced that a new building can change what they describe as a culture of overincarceration and mistreatment in the existing jail.

“The one we have now is certainly a death trap, and if we don’t fix that one, how in the hell are we going to start another one?” resident Fred Barkley said.

Mostly, though, they want to be included in the planning process before a site is selected, not after, as the committee has promised.

“Engage us, we can help,” Kareem Henton, a “bail disruptor” for The Bail Project in Cleveland and local Black Lives Matter organizer, said.

Committee members offered little reaction to the comments and did not speak before adjourning the meeting, but several of them have previously raised similar concerns over the potential environmental clean-up needed at the former Standard Oil refinery and how much it could cost.

Though officials have acknowledged that whatever site they chose would likely require some remediation, none were apparently aware that their preferred site had been so contaminated at one point that the state abandoned plans to use it for a men’s prison 40 years ago. Plain Dealer archives showed the site was believed to have at least seven hazardous chemicals, which the state determined, at the time, would require too much time or money to remove.

But Appelbaum calls that history “irrelevant,” because significant remediation has already occurred at the property.

Ohio Environmental Protection Agency documents outlining how the site may be used show that BP America, Inc., in 2004, took a number of steps to mitigate contamination concerns to allow it to be used for industrial and commercial purposes, and they must be maintained today. Those efforts included placing a 2-foot cover of dirt or pavement over the property to prevent potential contact with contaminants, containing groundwater and runoff flows, and developing a risk mitigation plan to protect construction or excavation workers.

It’s what has allowed the property, at 2700 Transport Road, to be used for commercial and industrial purposes, since. The site is currently owned by UTS Realty, LLC, and used as a shipping container yard.

More work would still be required before the Ohio EPA would approve the site for residential use -- the official classification for a jail. But Appelbaum said the potential cleanup required, and how much it’s likely to cost, is already factored into assessments for each of the properties under consideration. It was included in the evaluation criteria the committee used in its search.

Cleveland Councilman Kerry McCormack, in whose ward the property sits, pointed to other site criteria that he felt made the property a good fit, including the fact that it’s only about 3.6 miles outside of downtown, offering better access to city police officers and the courthouse, and its proximity to highways and existing public transportation.

“We have to pick a site at the end of the day,” McCormack said, “and this one checks all the boxes.”

Common pleas court Administrative Judge Brendan Sheehan and Prosecutor Michael O’Malley, reached after the meeting, said they’re still concerned about the environmental issues and want to see more information about the cleanup required. But they also have a bigger worry.

In a private meeting this week with County Council President Pernel Jones, which also included Public Defender Cullen Sweeney, the public officials said they discussed whether their votes to move the jail project forward would hinder the county’s ability to either build a new courthouse or renovate the existing one downtown. The committee is also overseeing that project but has yet to make any determinations on it.

O’Malley said they’ve watched the county put hundreds of millions of dollars toward other projects, including stadiums, arenas and hotels. They were surprised to see another $5 million recently committed toward a total $46 million renovation at the Global Center for Health Innovation and $86 million in federal American Rescue Plan Act dollars being used to create discretionary funds, rather than free up general fund dollars that could be put toward the justice center.

Early estimates for the justice center project topped over $1 billion, if the county pursues all the bells and whistles desired. The wish list starts with 91 individual courtrooms, jury rooms, and hearing spaces with wheelchair accessibility for every city and county judge and magistrate, adding another 246,000 square feet of usable space beyond the existing facility. It also would accommodate all ancillary functions, such as the prosecutor’s office and probation.

“The question is, what’s left for the justice center?” O’Malley asked. “We’re like the forgotten entity; we’re last in line for everything, yet there’s not a building in the county that the public visits more than the county justice center.”

The steering committee, for months, has been reviewing as many as 20 potential locations for a new jail. But if Tuesday’s meeting is any indication, neither of its front-runners seem popular, so far. Community members previously protested against using a former brownfield turned Ohio Job Ready site in Slavic Village that councilman Jones reiterated Tuesday that he would never support.

If both fail to receive the committee’s approval, it’s unclear where the county might turn next.

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