CENTERVILLE — St. Mary Parish broke ground on the site of the future Central Branch facility for the parish Sheriff's Office on Thursday morning.

The Sheriff's office says that it will be the first facility in parish history specifically designed for modern law enforcement, saying that for decades, it has operated substations out of repurposed buildings originally constructed for other uses.

"It's going to bring everybody together. Our crew division has been spread out throughout the parish. Some here, some there, so under this roof, we'll have all the narcotics, detectives, patrol, everybody will be here. We'll have a new motor pool built in the back. This will be the new, main, official one. We'll be shutting down the one in Morgan City, and every operation will be coming out of this office," St. Mary Sheriff Gary Driskell said.

Driskell told WBRZ that the facility will have technologies that will be instrumental for them in processing and investigating crimes.

"In this office as well, we'll have a new tech room, so that we'll be downloading computers and phones and things of that nature, evidence processing, which we've never had before, so we'll be able to do a lot more with this office than we've ever done. We're also going to be downloading vehicles, their computers, and vehicles," Driskell said.

The location was chosen to be near Highway 90 and around one mile from the parish jail.

"This is about as middle of the parish as we can get. We're about a mile from the middle of the parish, and like that, it's accessible to Highway 90, so it'd be a quick response, and we could go either direction," Driskell said.

Construction of the facility is expected to last around one year, with the construction being provided by St. Mary parish-based ARL Construction.

"We've actually started bulldozing a little bit here last week and de-grassing. We should be really starting to dig on the foundation here in the next couple of weeks. We're in the process of trying to get the local utilities in place right now, but the real work will probably really start taking place in about a month or so," ARL Construction Vice-President of Operations Hugh Hidalgo said.

Parish leaders say that it will be a first-class facility.

"This is a tremendous endeavor that's going on here. This is something I've never seen in my lifetime. The facility they're fixing to build here," St. Mary Parish Councilman Patrick Hebert said.