Associated Press
SALT LAKE CITY — After years of debate and study, Utah officials recommended Tuesday that a new state prison should be built near the airport in Salt Lake City.
The site about 3 miles west of the airport is close to existing facilities such as hospitals but could be the most expensive to develop.
Building a new prison could cost about $550 million. Consultants armed with additional data estimated Thursday that making the Salt Lake City land suitable for a facility that can house about 4,500 inmates would cost about $150 million, up from an initial estimate of about $130 million they gave lawmakers last month.
About $30 million of those upfront costs would go toward buying the land and $60 would be spent on stabilizing its soft soil.
Salt Lake City’s mayor and City Council oppose the prison being built in the city, arguing it would threaten wetlands near Great Salt Lake and that the area is better suited to smaller industrial buildings.
The site recommendation by the state Prison Relocation Commission must be considered by the state Legislature.
Gov. Gary Herbert is expected to call lawmakers into a special session as early as next week this year to consider the move.
The prison is now located in the Salt Lake City suburb of Draper. Supporters of the move say the facility, built in 1951, needs more space and updates.
They also argue the current prison occupies 700 acres of valuable land as high-tech companies such as Adobe and eBay have set up shop in the same south Salt Lake County corridor near Interstate 15.
In addition to the Salt lake City site, the commission discussed moving the prison to locations in Grantsville, Eagle Mountain and Fairfield, as local officials and residents lined up to oppose the project they fear will hurt property values and choke development.
The Salt Lake City site would be the most expensive of the four sites to develop, but over time, it would be the least expensive to operate because of its proximity to Salt Lake City. The water and wastewater treatment would be cheaper and its proximity to courts and hospitals would cost Utah half as much in the long term moving supplies and inmates to and from the prison, according to the commission.
Consultants estimated that a Salt Lake City prison would cost $423 million to operate over 50 years. The three other sites would run $670 million or more than $700 million over 50 years.
Many want lawmakers to keep the prison at its current spot in Draper.
Heidi Balderree, one of the organizers of an opposition group called Keep it in Draper, said she thinks the commission is rushing the move in order to gloss over opposition and avoid scrutinizing her group’s proposal that the prison be rebuilt where it stands.
Redeveloping the Draper site for business use could generate from $557 million to $2.7 billion in economic activity, according to estimates released by lawmakers.
If the prison isn’t moved, it will cost Utah $578 million over 20 years to improve and maintain the current site, according to the commission.
Several commission members, including Department of Corrections Director Rollin Cook, said Tuesday that a complete rebuild at a new site makes it much more likely that Utah will get a modern prison that lacks traditional barbed wire and guard towers and instead focuses more on inmate treatment rehabilitation in more discreet, industrial and office-style buildings.
“It would have been band-aided and band-aided as it has been and our folks in corrections would have been forced to work in an environment that was state-of-the-art two generations ago when grandpappy was out there running it as a guard,” Rep, Eric Hutchings, R-Kearns, said Tuesday. “It just doesn’t work anymore.”