BOISE BENCH, Idaho — Construction is underway at the Ada County Jail as part of the first phase of a larger expansion project aimed at keeping pace with the county's growing population.
County commissioners are using about $20 million in previously set-aside funds to renovate the jail's kitchen, an area that hasn't seen upgrades since the early 1990s, when the jail housed around 160 inmates.
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In 2023, voters narrowly rejected a bond that would have paid for a full jail expansion.
Chief Deputy Zachary Hessing said the kitchen now serves a dramatically larger population.
"Now we're in 2026, and we have over 1000 inmates, usually on average per day, and we're doing about 4000 meals a day."
That amounts to about 1.2 million meals every year.
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Before crews tear down the current kitchen setup, they are building space for a temporary kitchen made up of connected trailers.
"We're gonna build a corridor, pretty much a secured hallway, that's gonna go across the current rec yard, and it'll attach to that mobile kitchen," Hessing explained. “That corridor will always stay there from here on out. That'll be actually the future when we build another pod for housing inmates.”
The goal of the remodel is to modernize the kitchen, which currently prepares all meals from scratch.
"We're not making it bigger, we're just making it more efficient. So we're bringing in new technology to cook these meals," Hessing shared.
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Future phases of the project could include more inmate housing, a new booking and intake area, and other improvements, but Hessing said funding for those phases has not yet been secured.
Hessing says he wants taxpayers to understand the urgency behind the project.
"We're filling up our jail with more inmates. We need to expand our jail to be able to stay up with the current population," Hessing said.
The first phase is expected to be completed in July 2027.
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