Clinton lands $1.3M training center
Tennessee Corrections Institute facility planned for business park
This plat in the rear of the East Centre Stage Business Park off JD Yarnell Industrial Parkway in Clinton will be the site of a new East Tennessee training center for the Tennessee Corrections Institute (photo:G. Chambers Williams III )
It’s being built in the East Centre Stage Business Park off JD Yarnell Industrial Parkway.
Sandbar Properties LLC and the associated Davenport Construction & Development LLC of Jellico will build the facility and lease it to the Tennessee Corrections Institute.
TCI already operates similar centers in Nashville, for Middle Tennessee; and Jackson, for West Tennessee.
The training center will be housed in a 7,722-square-foot building with a brick exterior.
It will be right behind a Tennessee Department of Corrections facility in the same center, according to John Davenport, owner of Sandbar and Davenport Construction. It’s next door to Mc-Kamey Electric Co.
A building permit for the training center was issued by the city of Clinton on Jan. 29, which described it as a “new commercial structure.”
Davenport said work should get underway in March with grading of the site, and the building is expected to be turned over to the state by “the first of December.”
There will be offices and training classrooms, but no public access to the building, he said.
The state Department of General Services is in charge of getting the facility up and running for the Corrections Institute, said Michelle Sanders Parks, the department’s executive director of communications.
“In April 2023, the State Building Commission approved a new lease for a third-party, newly constructed office space serving the Tennessee Corrections Institute (TCI) in East Tennessee,” Parks said in an email to The Courier News.
“TCI received budget appropriations in fiscal year 2023 to provide training to jail correctional staff across all three grand regions [of Tennessee], as included in the Tennessee Law Enforcement Hiring, Training, and Recruitment Act in 2022.”
According to its website, “The Tennessee Corrections Institute provides technical assistance to facilities which includes the 14 areas of jail inspections as listed in the Minimum Standards.”
It continues:
“These areas comprise the scope of required expertise of the facility specialists. The goal is to aid specific facility management in meeting the requirements of the standards in question. However, in any circumstance which calls for additional expertise, the staff of the Tennessee Corrections Institute will request the assistance of the National Institute of Corrections, The American Correctional Association, the National Sheriffs’ Association, or any other agency within national, state, or local government which may supply the agency or their personnel with any additional help.”
The TCI, under the authority of Tennessee Code 41-4-140, “is required to establish minimum standards for adult local jails, lock-ups, workhouses, and detention facilities in the state,” the website notes.
“The agency’s Board of Control establishes the standards to inspect and certify local correctional facilities,” it says.
“The Tennessee Corrections Institute is responsible for educating local correctional staff while providing and monitoring basic certification and annual in-service training for personnel within local adult correctional detention facilities,” it furthers states.
Davenport recently built the Take 5 oil-change building on North Charles G. Seivers Boulevard, next to the Golden Girls restaurant, among other projects he has completed in the area.
