SUNBURY – Northumberland County has settled on a design for a new prison at the Northwestern Academy site. Commissioners unveiled the plan today that will provide housing for 288 prisoners and save about $35,000 over initial estimates.
Commissioner Sam Schiccatano says they will build a new secure wing onto an existing building, “The rest of the building, the blue sections and the middle section, is the existing maximum security building up at Northwestern. That would be what’s there existing now.”
Commissioner Kymberley Best said architects presented four different models to county officials over the past several weeks, “The engineering firm and our project manager really did take weeks of concerns and started punching holes in the design to come up with one that met everyone’s critique, really everyone’s.”
Other ideas included using three separate buildings, but the staffing and maintenance costs were prohibitive. The chosen design will cost $16.8 million to complete. That figure includes $3 million to remodel the existing portion of the building and $8.4 million to build the new secure addition.
Schiccatano says he is happy with the design because it is the best solution logistically and financially, “The total for the new design right there is $20,872,931 which is actually $35,283 less than what we proposed at our conference when we said we would remodel the three buildings and turn them into the county prison.”
The construction is estimated to take twelve months and commissioners are expecting to open the new prison in the spring of 2018. You can see photos of the design in this story at wkok.com.
