New facility in Springfield consolidates resources, saves money, reduces response time
By Ben Cox
Photos/Ben Cox and Submitted to The Source
The Sangamon County government’s business dealings usually have little effect beyond the county’s borders. However, a purchase of the former State Journal-Register building at 9th Street and Capitol Avenue in Springfield for $1.25 million in October 2021 will carry a profound impact across West Central Illinois.
The Sangamon County government purchased the property, now unofficially named Sangamon South, as a part of a $127 million renovation and upgrade project for the county’s offices. The former SJ-R facility, which sits one block south of the current county offices, was an ideal fit for the needed upgrades for the county’s facilities.
The 135,000-square-foot building had been on the market since 2011. Initial plans are to relocate portions of the Sangamon County Sheriff’s Office and the Sangamon-Menard Area Regional Transit offices along with the Sangamon County Coroner’s Office to the facility after renovations.
The renovations to the building were around $6.8 million. Funding for the project came from federal COVID-19 relief money and Sangamon County taxpayers.
The move of the coroner’s office to the facility will be the first dedicated office and county-owned morgue space for Sangamon County in its 160-year history.
The first level and basement of the facility will be the new home of the coroner’s office. Sangamon County Coroner Jim Allmon’s office currently is housed on the county building’s third floor, with death investigation having to travel to four to five separate locations to get investigation supplies and vehicles before traveling to a death investigation scene.
The building will still have vestiges of its former newspaper tenant, Allmon says, “We’ve found some old newspapers and other items that were left and intend on incorporating some of it into the decor.” The building also has some older seating and desks that were left, which are being used in efforts to remain frugal, according to Allmon.
Allmon says the new morgue and investigation space will cut down response times to scenes by 30-45 minutes because workers, investigation supplies, emergency response and vehicles will all be in one place. Death investigators will have amenities like a quiet room and a workout room to take care of themselves while they are on call. The workout equipment was donated by Scheel’s after Allmon wrote the company about the needs of investigators, whom he says have highly stressful jobs and sometimes don’t take care of themselves properly.
The building renovations include a new sally port for the deceased to be loaded and unloaded into the facility. The facility will have its own photography processing, X-rays and space for its county forensic pathologist, Dr. Nate Patterson.
Seventeen counties are partnering with the facility’s operations including Cass, Greene, Macoupin, Menard, Morgan, Scott and Schuyler, as well as the area’s Illinois Department of Corrections facilities. Bodies will no longer be transported to morgues at Springfield Memorial Hospital and HSHS St. John’s Hospital, where counties would have to be charged for both morgue, transportation and other fees for processing decedents prior to turning bodies over to funeral homes and crematories.
Allmon says that the new facility will be charging those fees for all the services provided, “There’s going to be a lot of revenue streams coming into Sangamon County that we’ve never seen before. We’re no longer going to be paying all of those fees to the hospitals that we currently pay now.
There’s going to be a nice swing in revenue with this. I’m not going to paint the picture that the [Sangamon County Coroner’s Office] is going to be self-sufficient by any means. We’re still going to cost the taxpayers money as we always will, but this will alleviate some of those costs.”
Fee structures for partnering counties have not yet been disclosed. However, logistically, Allmon believes that cooperating county coroner’s offices will see benefits from using the facility versus working at the two Springfield hospitals.
“We have exhausted the refrigerated space at both of these hospitals. They are in the business of taking care of people who are still alive and they need that space,” Allmon says. “While they have been a good host to [all] of us. I think they are happy that we’ve got our space and are going to be moving out.” Memorial is donating $200,000 worth of equipment from its morgue for the new facility.
The design of the facility and its amenities was overseen by Allmon with JH Petty Architects of Springfield. The facility has a 50-body refrigerator and a 12-body freezer. The freezer will be used for long-term storage for people whose body may go unclaimed or have no burial or cremation arrangements. The basement also is equipped with a zero-air flow decontamination chamber, modern autopsy facilities, X-ray and post-mortem toxicology and photography stations. Each county will have its own lockbox location in the facility to pick up evidence for death investigations as well as bodies. Allmon says all of the counties involved are extremely anxious to start work out of the new facility, “I really have an amazing space here, and my staff is excited about it. We’re all excited about it. We can’t wait to get it up and going.” The state-of-the-art facility is now fully operational, following its open house and ribbon-cutting ceremony on Wednesday, June 11.
