By Greg Jordan
Bluefield Daily Telegraph, W.Va.
PRINCETON, W.V. — A step at a time, Mercer County’s sheriff and deputies are getting ready to move out of their basement offices and into a former bank that’s being transformed into their new headquarters.
Current plans call for moving the Mercer County Sheriff’s Department from the Mercer County Courthouse’s basement and into what was once the Mercer County Professional Building.
In March 2024, the Mercer County Commission approved a $1.75 million American Rescue Plan grant to buy the former bank building. The money was part of the $11.4 million from the American Rescue Plan Act, also known as the COVID-19 Stimulus Package, that the county was awarded in 2021.
Sheriff Alan Christian said when the structure was purchased that moving into it will bring big changes for his department.
The current basement quarters has only 1,600 square feet of space, but the new building will let the deputies and other personnel spread out their offices into 10,000 square feet, he said.
The new headquarters has its own parking lot, so deputies won’t have to park their cruisers alongside the courthouse, freeing up more space in the busy streets.
In March, the county commission approved a $100,000 grant from the county’s almost $2.6 million opioid settlement fund for renovating the department’s new quarters.
Current plans are to move in by September’s third week, Christian said Monday. Interior work is nearly finished and the work is moving into a new phase. This phase focuses on the building’s exterior, but rainy weather has caused some delays.
“Nature, she’s not being kind this year,” he said.
An opening celebration is being planned.
“We hope to have a rollout so everyone can see what we’ve got compared to what we had,” Christian said.
County Commission President Bill Archer said Monday that some of space the move opens up on the courthouse’s basement will be used for storage.
“The storage area is going to be primarily for the county clerk’s office,” he said. “They have to hold onto records for long periods of time.”
Some offices such as one for personnel controlling inmate in the holding cell will remain, Archer said.
For several years, the commission has been moving stored records out of the old county jail, which is located on the courthouse’s top floor.
“We’ve been trying to eliminate all the storage up there as quickly as possible,” Archer said.
Built during the Thirties, the jail was equipped with steel floors and a steel ceiling as well as the cells’ steel bars.
All that steel put a lot of weight on the courthouse’s top floor. Archer said that before he became a commissioner in 2016, a state inspector looked over the old jail and said that the weight was not appropriate for the courthouse.
“When the county went into the regional jail system – all of West Virginia did, too – we just used that area up there for storage,” Archer said.
Back at the new sheriff’s department headquarters, there are plans to create a museum honoring previous deputies. Christian asked Archer, the author of several books detailing the region’s history, to help establish one.
“We do have some items that could be displayed,” Archer said. “It could be exciting. We also want to have an honor roll for officers who died in the line of duty.”
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Contact Greg Jordan at
gjordan@bdtonline.com
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