A $1.3 million proposal from MC Builders to expand the Flathead County jail within the Justice Center won unanimous approval from commissioners on Wednesday.

The plan is to add a 36-bed dormitory to the adult detention center by renovating space on the second floor of the Justice Center where the County Attorney office complex was located. Those offices recently were relocated to the renovated Old Jail building south of the main Courthouse.

Flathead County Justice Court will remain on the second floor of the Justice Center.

Construction is expected to begin in a couple of weeks, and the addition should be completed by next spring.

MC Builders is a joint venture limited liability company that includes Martel Construction of Bigfork and CTA Architects Engineers of Kalispell.

Diamond Construction of Kalispell submitted a proposal that was $200,000 less than the winning proposal, but was disqualified because the company didn’t return one of the required forms in the request-for-proposal.

Sletten Construction of Great Falls also was tossed out because of a paperwork error in the first round of the process, a request for qualifications. Because of that error Sletten was not allowed to submit a proposal.

MC Builders’ proposal for a cost not to exceed $1,315,000 includes all of the construction and fees except for the building permit. The county now will negotiate the terms of the contract with MC Builders.

CTA Senior Project Manager David Mitchell said all of the elements of the project are clarified in the proposal, from stainless steel requirements to security measures.

“I think we’ve got it covered very well,” Mitchell told the commissioners. “We meet all the detention and building-code standards and all the modern technology installations.”

A county scoring committee gave MC Builders’ proposal high marks. It scored 961 points out of 1,000.

Commissioner Gary Krueger said that although Diamond Construction’s proposal wasn’t scored, it would not necessarily have scored higher just because the price was lower.

“We do have a scored proposal the scoring committee was happy with,” Krueger said. “If we want to do something different I think we’d have to throw out all the proposals and start over.”

The commissioners then voted to move forward with MC Builders.

Earlier this year the county hired a Denver firm to look at the feasibility of converting space in the Justice Center into an overflow addition for the county jail.

Jail overcrowding has become a chronic problem for Flathead County. Built in 1985 to handle 63 prisoners at capacity, the existing county jail was overcrowded by the early 1990s and now typically houses more than 100 prisoners nightly.

Earlier this year the jail housed a record 126 inmates at one point.

Last year the commissioners created a funding mechanism to begin setting aside money for a jail expansion. The county is reclaiming mills not levied from past years and earmarking the new tax revenue for a jail expansion. The additional tax money, to be levied over seven years, is expected to generate about $10 million.

County officials have acknowledged, however, that by the end of seven years the cost of a new jail could be in excess of $30 million.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by email at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.