I’m pleased to announce that an important milestone has been reached in our efforts to redevelop the courthouse in East Cambridge. A quick primer: the Commonwealth has been planning to sell the Middlesex Jail in East Cambridge, but first we needed to determine where the current inmates would be housed going forward. Sheriff Peter Kotoujian and the authorities at the jail used innovative methods to make conditions tolerable inside a structure that had outlived its usefulness, but we all knew the inmates would eventually have to be moved to a different facility.

Today, an agreement was reached whereby the inmates at the Middlesex County Jail will be transferred to the Billerica House of Corrections. All inmates will be transferred from Cambridge to Billerica no later than December 31, 2013. I want to say thank you to everyone who worked on this project and to everyone on Sheriff Kotoujian’s staff who were asked to do more with less and came through with flying colors.