Concrete slabs sit in a staging area in preparation to be set up as walls for the new Clatsop County Jail in Warrenton.

WARRENTON — The new Clatsop County Jail, originally slated for completion in 2021, is now estimated to open in September or October.

The jail is under construction at the former North Coast Youth Correctional Facility, which closed in 2017. In December, construction crews raised the walls for an addition that will house the jail’s general population.

“It’s been a moving target, which has been frustrating,” Sheriff Matt Phillips, the project supervisor, said.

A combination of supply chain disruptions, labor shortages and rising material costs has slowed progress. The bid date was postponed when contractors involved needed to flee fire zones during the historic wildfires of 2020.

When the county went out to bid, the bids that came back were significantly over the nearly $24 million construction budget. The project is being financed by a $20 million bond voters approved in 2018, a bond premium and money from the county.

The county scaled back the design by eliminating a few housing units and making other compromises, such as reducing the number of skylights.

But the new facility — a project overseen by Cornerstone Management Group and designed by DLR Group — will be a drastic improvement, Phillips said.

The existing jail in Astoria, which opened in 1980, has 60 beds — 40 in use because of coronavirus restrictions — and a long history of overcrowding.

The new jail, designed to have 148 beds, will allow the county to house inmates who normally wouldn’t qualify for the county’s pretrial release program but who still get sent back into the community shortly after they’re booked.

“This will certainly put us in a position to where we won’t have to make forced releases,” Phillips said.

The Astoria jail has one exam room. “It literally used to be a closet,” Phillips said. The new one will have a medical suite with two exam rooms, as well as a mental health interview room.

At the current jail, visitors talk to inmates from a tight row of stools. The upgrade will include private booths for visitors.

The new jail will also have a kitchen where staff can prepare and serve breakfast, lunch and dinner on site. Inmates now eat from premade meal trays.

Among the most significant upgrades: The wing that used to house the juvenile detention center will become an intake unit where jail staff can hold inmates in one-person cells when they first enter the premises.

At intake, they can be monitored, their condition assessed. Deputies can see if the person is ill or detoxing from drugs or alcohol, or has drugs that need to be removed.

“If someone is going through withdrawal, it’s pretty awkward to be laying in a day room or in a dorm with a bunch of people who are feeling well,” Phillips said.

The new jail will be a more rehabilitative environment for inmates, he said.

“People have to remember that every person that comes into this jail is someone’s family member — mother, brother, sister, son, daughter — and that most of the people that come into the jail are members of our community,” Phillips said. “And oftentimes, it could be the person checking your groceries, pumping your gas, it’s the person that built your house, that cycles through the jail.”

The facility, he said, will give law enforcement better tools to take care of these community members. “And hopefully to get them to a place where they don’t have to come back and visit us,” he said.