County Playing Hard Ball With Jail Contractor

ORLANDO-Orange County officials are meeting with Haskell Co. of Jacksonville, FL this week to try and head off a future legal headache on the planned first-phase, 125,000-sf, 652-bed expansion of the county’s inmate-jammed 23-year-old jail.

The jail is coincidentally located near the 33rd Street business park, one of the area’s hottest industrial submarkets.

If Haskell, a national general contractor with jail construction experience, can’t do the expansion for the budgeted $25 million and bring the job in after 12 months, elected officials say they will give the work to Centex-Rooney Construction Co. of Fort Lauderdale, FL, the county procurement staff’s initial selection.