6 hours Ago
Hillsborough County’s leaders are making capital improvements to its flagship properties — including the Hillsborough County Nursing Home in Goffstown and the Registry of Deeds in Nashua — and are studying whether to renovate the Valley Street jail in Manchester or replace it. Federal pandemic relief funds are paying for the work. The county received $81 million in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding, county Administrator Chad Monier said.
The money was obligated by the Dec. 31, 2024 deadline and must be fully spent by Dec. 31, 2026.
The heating, ventilation and air conditioning system is being overhauled at the nursing home, a nonprofit, 300-bed skilled and intermediate care facility. Work began in 2021 and is scheduled to conclude in August 2026, nursing home administrator David Ross said. The project costs $22.
5 million and is being funded with the county’s share of ARPA funds and a grant from the state’s share of federal recovery act funds. HIllsborough County Nursing Home in Goffstown on April 3, 2025. ARPA money is not part of the pandemic relief funds that federal health officials last month said they were taking back from state and local public health agencies throughout the country, Ross said.
“It’s a very significant upgrade,” Ross said. The nursing home’s existing HVAC system “reached the end of its useful life” and the project will improve air quality, energy efficiency and introduce central air conditioning to the facility for the first time since it was built in 1975, he said. Work is being done floor by floor at the four-story building, he said.
The final project in this series of capital improvement initiatives is a study now underway to assess the condition of the existing Hillsborough County House of Correction, aka the Valley Street jail, to determine the county’s long-term corrections needs and recommend how best to meet them. Commissioners last year approved spending a total $463,596 on the study. “It’s really the last building that we have to consider in the long-range plan,” Commissioner Robert Rowe of Amherst said.
County officials said the 39-year-old jail is deteriorating and requires costly repairs. It was designed for an era when corrections focused on “warehousing” inmates, they say, and is not well-suited to programs aimed at rehabilitation and re-entry into society. It is also underused: Last year, it housed less than half the number of inmates for which it was built.
“It’s outlived its usefulness. And it’s too big for our needs now,” Commissioner Michael Soucy of Nashua said. The study is being done by Labella of Rochester, New York, and Justice Planners of North Myrtle, South Carolina, companies that specialize in corrections and criminal justice projects.
In making their recommendations, the companies will project inmate populations 30 years from now. The study will assess several options: • Renovate the existing jail. • Renovate the current jail and expand it to accommodate community corrections and specialized programs for minimum-security inmates.
• Build an entirely new jail either at the existing site or on land the county owns elsewhere, Hillsborough County Department of Corrections Superintendent Joseph Costanzo said. As part of the study, Labella and Justice Planners will review other county sites where a new jail could be built. Two tracts are in Goffstown: One is the site of the former state prison for women on Mast Road and the other is a large tract of open land on the other side of Mast Road, county officials said.
The current jail is a three-story, red brick facility opened in 1989 and occupies about half a city block. It houses men and women from throughout Hillsborough County who are awaiting trial on criminal charges or serving sentences of less than one year for misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies. Commissioners said they don’t know what it would cost to build a new jail, should that be the study’s recommendation.
Soucy offered a “rough guess” of “$150 million to $200 million.” The cost could be offset by selling the land where the existing jail stands, he said. Costanzo said cost estimates will be in the final report and warned against speculating because too many variables are involved.
Any decision to renovate or build a jail, however, likely will mean the county has to borrow the money and repay the debt through property taxes assessed on county residents since federal pandemic relief funds no longer will be available, commissioners said. Commissioners should receive the final jail study by Oct. 1.
They will review it and make a recommendation to the executive committee. Ultimately, the 123-member county legislative delegation will vote on how to proceed. “I’m in full support of looking at long-range capital programs for the jail.
Again, we want to make sure the taxpayers are not burdened by excessive costs,” said Commissioner Rowe, who represents 24 communities. Additionally, commissioners approved a $6.1 million renovation to the Bouchard Building county complex in Goffstown, again to be paid for with federal pandemic relief funds.
The project will allow the Sheriff’s Department to expand, install a new emergency communications system and construct a new building to house the University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension. It is scheduled to be done in September 2026. The Hillsborough County Registry of Deeds is housed in the old County Court House at 19 Temple St.
in Nashua. Commissioners approved renovating the historic Registry of Deeds building at 19 Temple St., Nashua.
Its roof will be repaired and a new HVAC system will be installed along with security upgrades, commissioners said. In addition, historical Registry of Deeds documents will be scanned to make them accessible online. Commissioners said they also used federal pandemic relief funds to support nonprofit organizations and affordable housing.
Hillsborough County has nearly one-third of the Granite State’s population — 422,937 residents, according to the 2020 U.S. Census — and is home to its two largest cities, Manchester and Nashua, and 29 towns.
.
