THOMASVILLE — With inmates no longer housed at the Thomas County Prison, county officials are looking to remove its inventory before tearing most of the building down.

County departments have put in their wish lists for the items still within the prison walls, ranging from a lawn mower to mop buckets to box fans to fire extinguishers and a multitude of items in between. 

At Thursday morning’s Thomas County Commission Public Property Committee meeting, Commissioner Wiley Grady urged department heads to set a time with the prison warden and then retrieve their property.

Grady, the committee chairman, said the county wasn’t going to store anything at the old prison.

“We’re not going to store anything here,” he said. “Once we store something, it’s stored forever and we never get rid of it. We just accumulate it.”

Lyndall Knight, the Thomas County government building maintenance director, said power to the prison will be kept on in order to maintain climate control until the last items of inventory are removed.

Knight also asked county officials who are coming to take their requested items to let him or prison warden Bobby Geer know when they will be at the prison to pick up their material.

Perishable food items, including bread and eggs, were taken to the county jail last week. 

Some items, such as razor wire and steel dining tables, may be headed elsewhere in the state Department of Corrections.

“There are a lot of things in the prison that other prisons would like to have,” Grady said. 

Once all the inventory is removed, much of the facility will be torn down. 

“Once we get the building cleaned out, we’ll make plans to demolish it,” Grady said.

Some of it, perhaps the visitors center, may be preserved.

“This complex has a lot of history,” said commission Chairman Ken Hickey.

Added Sheriff Carlton Powell, “I think the most ancient part of it is what you ought to try to preserve.”

Grady noted that when he walked through the empty prison last Friday, “it was really weird.”

Built in 1928, the prison housed up to 180 inmates, all who have been relocated to other facilities. Commissioners voted in November 2016 to close the prison. Grady acknowledged the price of maintaining the prison was not worth the cost, since the state pays counties $20 per day per inmate.

Building a new prison could have cost in the neighborhood of $18 million. 

“I’m surprised we haven’t been ordered by some court by now to make it better accommodations,” Grady said. “We thought the most economical move was to get out of the prison business.”

Anything not claimed by the various departments or sent to the state system will be put up for surplus.

“I suspect we’ll have a major sale in September,” Grady said.

Editor Pat Donahue can be reached at (229) 226-2400 ext. 1806.