The Greene County Board of Supervisors are moving forward with a potential purchase of privately owned property.

Midland Power Cooperative is moving its administrative offices to a new location in Boone. Officials have been in discussions with the Supervisors and the Greene County Sheriff’s Office about purchasing part of the property on East Lincoln Way. The Board is interested in the property to move some of the sheriff’s office personnel to the main building. Previous discussions have also targeted building a new county jail on the same property as well.

Supervisor Chair John Muir says the targeted purchase price is $600,000 and the short-term plans are to move the administrative offices at the sheriff’s office to the Midland Power main building, with the eventual goal of building a new jail.

“So we arrived at a price which was going to save us a lot from the start, knowing that our state (jail) inspector told us – a year and a half ago or so – that our jail was in need of some very major improvements. So we were going to have to do something. Timing is never good to spend money but it was a savings that made it very attractive for us to consider and I think we’ll do that.”

Muir explains what intrigued the Supervisors about the structure.

“It’s an amazingly well-built building. I mean they spared no expense in building it, so it’s a high quality building. Lots of things are usable by the sheriff’s office and we don’t have to do much improvement or tweaking of it.”

A public hearing about the purchase agreement is expected to be held at the Supervisors regular meeting on Monday.