Fulton County commissioners have unanimously approved a design contract worth more than $45 million for a special-purpose jail facility meant to house inmates with mental health needs, moving forward on a project county officials say is dedicated to jail efficiency and specialized care. The facility is still years from completion, but the design phase alone carries a price tag in the tens of millions, and county leaders say the overall project is expected to cost roughly half a billion dollars.
The vote, reported by 95.5 WSB, covers the design work for a facility that will include dining, laundry, and administrative space alongside housing units built for inmates who need specialized care. Assistant County Manager Steve Nawrocki said officials hope the facility will be completed within the next five years, and that the contract is expected to be executed and notice to proceed granted within a couple of weeks, according to the station's report.
Design Work Stretches Into 2028
Nawrocki said the design phase itself is expected to continue until roughly the second quarter of 2028, per the same account from 95.5 WSB station staff. That timeline underscores how much work remains before the county breaks ground on a facility that has been described, repeatedly and in varying terms, as central to fixing long-standing problems inside the Fulton County Jail system.
Exactly how much the finished facility will cost, and how large it will be, has shifted across public documents and reporting over the past year. A request for proposals Fulton County issued in August described a planned detention facility of about 780,000 square feet with 1,800 beds and a $600 million budget, plus a separate 120,000-square-foot Accelerated Housing Component with 480 to 500 beds and a $150 million budget, according to Correctional News. That outlet reported the RFP's combined $750 million preliminary construction budget was described as planning limits subject to county validation and adjustment, not a locked-in final figure.
Competing Numbers From Earlier Plans
Other reporting has attached different totals to versions of the project at earlier stages. ConstructConnect News reported that commissioners approved a $1.1 billion construction-and-renovation plan in August 2025 covering both the new special-purpose facility and renovations to the Rice Street Main Jail, with the special-purpose facility's construction cost projected at the time to be $536 million. By April, the county's own announcement described commissioners taking action that included approval of financing for a new special-purpose facility and future Rice Street Jail renovations, framing the overall effort as a billion-dollar investment in jail conditions, according to Fulton County's government website.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that same month that commissioners had unanimously approved a $1.3 billion financing plan to renovate the Rice Street jail and build a new 1,800-bed facility for inmates requiring behavioral and medical care, putting the special-purpose facility's price tag at $734 million — a cost the paper said had risen by about $98 million since earlier estimates. Those figures do not match ConstructConnect's earlier $536 million projection or the RFP's later $600 million detention-facility budget, and the available reporting does not reconcile the discrepancies into one settled number.
Why the Jail Needs This Facility
The push for a dedicated special-purpose facility follows years of scrutiny over conditions inside the Fulton County Jail. A U.S. Department of Justice report dated November 2024 found that medical and mental health care at the jail did not meet constitutional standards, citing barriers to care caused by a lack of security staff, medication-administration gaps that led to medical and mental health complications and injuries, and inadequate responses when medical emergencies occurred. That report came from the U.S. Department of Justice.
More than 30 people have died in Fulton County custody since 2021, according to FOX 5 Atlanta. That toll has loomed over each successive version of the county's building plans, from the earlier proposal for a roughly 600-bed new-build facility with an estimated five-year construction period described by Correctional News, to the larger 1,800-bed designs described in more recent county and RFP documents.
What Comes Next
Fulton County had anticipated Board of Commissioners consideration of the broader procurement process on Nov. 18, according to Correctional News' earlier report. ConstructConnect reported that the county plans to begin a $552 million renovation of the Rice Street Jail once the new special-purpose facility is complete. For now, the approved design contract marks a concrete step in a project whose final scope, cost, and completion date remain in flux even as commissioners keep signing off on pieces of it.
