Work progressing on Phillips Building, future home of Forsyth sheriff's office

A downtown building once used by the former Wachovia Corp. for operations is on target for conversion into a new Forsyth County Sheriff's Office early next year.

Known for years as the Phillips Building, the six-story structure on Church Street, directly east of the Winston Tower, will bring together scattered law enforcement offices and provide space for an emergency operations center, and perhaps an expansion of the county jail, in the event of some future need.

"This is sorely needed," Sheriff Bill Schatzman said on a recent tour of the building. "It is an important milestone for the county. This building will not only serve the Sheriff's Office way out into the future, but there are also many opportunities to serve the county in the future."

The Sheriff's Office and emergency operations center will occupy only two floors of the building. The rest is an empty shell for now but has four floors of potential space for future use.

Glenn Wise, the project manager for general contractor New Atlantic Contracting Inc., said that the building is essentially new on the inside. And because the occupied spaces are for law enforcement, many spaces in the building require more than the average grade of construction material.

"We replaced all the windows, and there is a new roof," Wise said. New air conditioning and heating systems are more energy-efficient, he said, and the building has enough generator capacity to keep running in an emergency.

In places where officers would be under potential threat from someone who might come inside the building with a gun, bullet-resistant gypsum wallboard is in place. Interrogation cells will have steel reinforcement in the walls, making escape impossible.

The county has been eyeing the Phillips Building for county offices since 2007, when county officials considered whether it could serve as a new court building.

By the next year, a new plan had emerged: Convert most of the building into additional jail cells, leaving room for the Sheriff's Office.

The potential for using the building as a jail expansion is still there, said Ed Jones, the deputy county manager. The upper floors could be linked to the detention center with a skyway spanning Third Street to the south.

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Work progressing on Phillips Building, future home of Forsyth sheriff's office