Executive Council delays vote on $36 million design contract for new prison

The Executive Council hit pause on a $35.9 million contract to design a new men’s prison, weighing the cost of the project and the consequences of delaying it.

State officials have long stressed the need to replace the facility in Concord, first built in 1878 and expanded in the 1980s. Conditions are so dire, they say, that fixes to its aging infrastructure and outdated design can’t be put off much longer for fear of safety risks and lawsuits.

Those urgings weren’t enough to allay the lump in councilors’ throats about the project’s potential $700 million price tag.

Janet Stevens, a Republican from Rye, said even the design firm itself, Omaha-based DLR Group, was too expensive, calling it the “Saks Fifth Avenue” of design firms.

“I think their work is splendid — if I was building a museum,” Stevens said. “I’m really struggling with the cost.”

DLR Group, which the state has already paid $10 million to conduct a site study, was the prison project’s only bidder. Putting it back out for bid would only further delay a project that has already been on the state’s back burner for more than a decade.

Bill Hart, Department of Corrections commissioner, said that if the prison isn’t replaced, his department could pay at least $25 million in maintenance costs each year, an expense that will only increase.

The older the facility gets, he added, the more likely a lawsuit becomes. The current facility has weathered widespread structural issues, like cracked cement floors, leaky ceilings and a steady stream of broken equipment, including dysfunctional boilers and shattered glass panes. Just this week, officials said, a water main has leaked twice.

“The situation is not sustainable at Corrections,” said Karen Liot Hill, a Democrat from Lebanon. “When I toured the facility last year, there were literally tarps in the kitchen. I mean, there’s no way that the kitchen at the prison would pass any kind of Health and Human Services inspection that a restaurant that’s open to the public would have to pass.”

Stevens posited that the total cost of development could sum up to $700 million, which Ted Kupper, the state’s director of public works, said wasn’t an “unreasonable” guess. Two years ago, the approximation was $600 million, set to be the largest capital project in state history. The state won’t have a formal cost estimate until the site study is complete.

But Hart sought to quell councilors’ hesitations on the looming project: If it’s too expensive, then it’s too expensive.

“Safety and security are crucial. Cost containment is the No. 1 factor that we’ll be looking at,” Hart said. “If the price is too much, we’re simply not going to be able to do it. Full stop.”

Under the proposed contract, which the Council tabled to a later date, DLR Group would be responsible for designing the prison, translating that design into building instructions and overseeing construction alongside the state’s Division of Public Works. The construction phase alone is expected to take four or five years, according to the proposed project schedule. The contract extends through 2035.

DLR Group made headlines earlier this month for its ties with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, including a contract to turn a former prison in Oklahoma into an immigration detention center. After employees expressed their disapproval, the company said it won’t take on those projects in the future.

Plans for the replacement men’s prison estimate the new 750,000-square-foot complex to hold 1,500 beds. The Secure Psychiatric Unit, the state’s highest-security inpatient psychiatric facility, will move out of the men’s prison into a new 24-bed hospital in the pipeline on Clinton Street.

The men’s prison sits on a large plot of land near downtown Concord, a challenge for city leaders. Those 392 acres, owned by the state, yield no tax revenue to the city but rely on municipal services. Some city councilors have said they want the new prison built outside of Concord.

Moving it is unlikely. The state already owns a vast stretch of land behind what’s visible from North State Street. Kupper said they’re looking at two possible locations on that same plot.

Apart from that, “there’s no other location that we’re looking at right now,” he said.

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