A decade after admitting defeat on a Fail Jail that was started and never finished, and after accruing $100 million of cost overruns on the second attempt, Wayne County has taken possession of a new jail.

As the Detroit Free Press’s JC Reindl reports, the March 18 handoff of the keys to the Wayne County Jail starts a six-month clock for various entities — the sheriff’s Office, prosecutor’s office and the circuit court — to move to the new facility. Wayne County partnered with Dan Gilbert and his company, Bedrock, to build the new facility.

While a previous attempt at the Wayne County Jail, under County Executive Bob Ficano, was halted and eventually called off after about $90 million in cost overruns, the new jail’s cost overruns were even higher, above $100 million. Wayne County Executive Warren Evans presided over the second effort.

As Reindl reports:

The complex’s design and construction were originally budgeted at $533.6 million, with the county’s costs set at $401.3 million and Bedrock’s at $132.3 million.

Total costs now stand at $670.7 million, with the county’s share at $502.8 million and Bedrock’s share at $167.9 million, according to documents obtained by the Free Press.

The overruns mostly owe to the need for a new DTE power plant at the jail site, for $35 million, and buying out parking rights so employees could park for free, which cost $28 million.

Gilbert will take possession of the two adult jail buildings downtown as well as the juvenile jail and the Frank Murphy Hall of Justice, home to Wayne County Circuit Court and the county prosecutor’s office.

The new facility was built off Mack and Interstate 75.

A historic school building at the center of a dispute between the West Bloomfield School District and the local community got a temporary reprieve Friday when a circuit court judge issued a restraining order preventing the district from demolishing the building.

“The Court finds that Plaintiffs are entitled to an ex parte temporary restraining order,” Sixth Judicial Circuit Court Judge Phyllis McMillen wrote. “For the reasons set forth in the Amended Motion and supporting affidavits, the Court finds there is no adequate remedy at law and there is a real and imminent danger of irreparable injury in the absence of a restraining order.”

McMillen’s decision came in a case filed by a local community group, Heart of the Lakes Community Inc., seeking to stop West Bloomfield from destroying the school, which the district fears could fall into the hands of a competing school.

The abandoned school building has become a flashpoint over a convoluted debate on restrictive covenants in property deeds that seek to prevent retired school properties from being used by private or charter schools after public school districts sell them.

Although Michigan law prohibits school districts from including such language in property deeds, a bill sponsored by Rep. Noah Arbit, D-West Bloomfield, would change that. Part of the argument in favor of House Bill 5025 is a claim that without restrictive property language, public school districts would risk seeing their former buildings used by market competitors.

At Michigan House testimony in February, a member of the West Bloomfield School Board made this case explicitly.

“Roosevelt is a beautiful 104-year-old historic building that is facing demolition because we simply cannot afford to have it become a competing school,” said Carol Finkelstein. Those remarks drew wide criticism, and Finkelstein made efforts to rephrase them at a March 4 school board meeting. At that meeting, the board took a final vote to destroy the building later this month.

Finkelstein also pushed back at that meeting against what she described as a public perception that the school district’s process with Roosevelt School has not been transparent. But McMillen’s decision, which supports Heart of the Lakes’ claim that the school district repeatedly violated the Open Meetings Act, undercuts that claim.

McMillen has ordered the district to halt all work on the demolition and maintain the building in its current condition.

The school district has been given a date of March 27 to challenge the restraining order and head off a permanent injunction.