Construction of the $68.2 million Collier County Sheriff’s Office forensics building in East Naples is set to begin in December after county commissioners approved a local builder.
The Board of County Commissioners on Nov. 12 approved the staff’s selection of Pittsburgh-based Rycon Construction Inc., a Florida corporation with offices in Fort Myers, and agreed it will be paid $51.93 million, with an owner’s allowance of $4 million for potential unforeseen conditions. Project costs are fully covered by the county’s infrastructure sales surtax, which ended Dec. 31, 2023. The project was among several listed when voters approved the tax referendum in 2018.
“We received four bids on this, with Rycon providing the lowest bid,” Brian DeLony, county interim facilities management director, told commissioners, noting Rycon is employee-owned and has another county contract. “They had $1.1 billion in revenue in 2023, and they were reported in Engineering News-Record’s as a top 400 contractor in 2023 and 2024.”
Rycon is currently building the county’s Emergency Management Services Station 74 and has adhered to construction schedules. Engineering firms Emmons & Olivier Resources, Stantec and Manhattan Construction Group have done work, with Manhattan transporting dirt to the site and overseeing the project from beginning to end as the construction manager at risk.
The sheriff’s office, which stores equipment in several locations, outgrew its space. The new building will allow the CCSO to move its Criminal Investigation Division, Youth Relations and Patrol Administration from an old building at 2373 E. Horseshoe Drive.
It will be built off City Gate Drive, just north of Paradise Coast Sports Complex and Great Wolf Lodge, east of Collier Boulevard and north of Interstate 75. The state-of-the-art forensics-evidence and Criminal Investigations Division building will be built on about 29 acres of a 344-acre parcel the county acquired in 1999.
Sheriff Kevin Rambosk and his predecessor, Sheriff Don Hunter, had asked commissioners for a new building for 20 years before the county Infrastructure Sales-Surtax Committee approved $33 million for the project in May 2019.
But the project encountered challenges, including the pandemic, rising costs and market rates. In January 2022, commissioners approved adding 40,000 square feet more to the space so CCSO operations could be consolidated in one location, and they could leave their Horseshoe Drive building. In September, the Infrastructure Sales-Surtax Committee approved $35.2 million more for the project.
“It will enable us to increase efficiency, consolidate evidence and accommodate the growth of our agency and our community,” Rambosk said in September.
The forensic-evidence facility will feature a two-story, 95,000-square-foot main building that will house the Crime-Scene Investigation lab, office space, Evidence Bureau and garage bays. The Criminal Investigation Department offices and administrative support will be on the second floor. A separate 19,000-square-foot, one-story, preengineered metal building that’s temperature controlled will store evidence vehicles. Other buildings include a generator enclosure.
Sean Williams, CCSO’s Central Services director, told commissioners the building will allow CCSO to leave some leased storage space and it will be used by the agency and its Corrections Department.
Commissioner Dan Kowal, a retired CCSO employee, asked what the county would do with the East Horseshoe Drive building. County Manager Amy Patterson said it’s old, but the space can be reallocated to another need, such as the Transportation Department and Community Development Division, which lease space on Horseshoe Drive, a road annexed by the county from the city nearly two decades ago.
