A decade after the project was proposed, and almost
two years after it was scheduled to be ready, Pennsylvania this month plans to
start moving staff into its biggest, most expensive prison, the $400 million
State Correctional Institution Phoenix.
Among state facilities, only the Convention Center in
Philadelphia has cost taxpayers more, and still at issue is $23 million in
fines related to construction delays.
Eight guard towers and utility buildings at the
white concrete complex just east of the aging Graterford Prison in
Skippack Township, Montgomery County, have been granted certificates of
occupancy after a series of contractor
squabbles, inspection struggles, and final construction fixes in advance
of the latest target completion date, Sept. 28. State officials said some
prison staff will move to Phoenix in a few weeks.
Inspectors still are reviewing 3,000 electrical,
mechanical, and architectural “deficiencies” in the 12 separate cell block
buildings and at 12 other structures at Phoenix, said Troy Thompson,
spokesman for the state Department of General Services. The state has no
estimate for when all those buildings will be ready. The Department of
Corrections expects to finish moving prisoners from Graterford to Phoenix
by July 21, said Corrections Department spokeswoman Susan McNaughton.
The new prison, surrounded by rows of building-high
barbed wire instead of a massive stone wall, adds program space and will
have air-conditioning, a big change from the sweltering summers at Graterford.
Graterford
and Phoenix prisons
For many prisoners, including some of the longest
serving, the new prison also will mean closer sleeping conditions: Phoenix
was built with 1,972 cells, according to the Department of General
Services, compared with the 2,732 at Graterford. So the estimated 4,000 inmates
who will occupy Phoenix and its death row and women’s units — a few hundred
more than Graterford — will be housed typically two to a cell, unlike the
single-occupancy cells where many lifers live at Graterford. The new cells
are slightly larger than Graterford’s.
Lifers and other longtime prisoners who have become
accustomed to Graterford’s “free-flowing” inmate traffic among cell
blocks are apprehensive of the change to Phoenix, with its separate
residential buildings, said Tyrone Werts, who spent 36
years in Graterford for his role in a 1975 murder in Philadelphia.
Gov. Ed Rendell commuted Werts’ sentence in 2010 — three
years after word spread that a new prison was going up. Back then, the prospect
of a transfer raised Werts’ “angst and anxiety,” with the thought of the loss
of access to people he knew across the complex and the relationships he relied
on. Werts, who now works with inmates through the Inside-Outside
Prison Exchange Program and his own End Crime Project, says inmates
today are similarly anxious about the move.
“I just thank God every day that I don’t have to
experience that,” Werts said.
Changing from a vast prison like Graterford to
self-contained cell blocks, “you go from a city to a teeny, tiny little town,”
said Teri Himebaugh, a lawyer who has represented inmates at Graterford
for 30 years, including lawsuits against the state for asbestos exposure and
living conditions.
The prison has so far cost $350 million, plus $50 million
in planning and other “soft costs.”
The final cost may be more — or less: State officials
have said they are owed $23 million back in “liquidated damages” for nearly two
years of delay by general contractor Walsh Heery Joint Venture. The
Pittsburgh-based partnership of firms from Chicago and Atlanta built the
complex, mostly in 2012 to 2015, after the job was bid three times under
Rendell (who favored a union-friendly labor-management “project-labor
agreement”) and Gov. Tom Corbett (who endorsed the “design-build” model on
which the prison was built).
Delay penalties racked up
at $35,000 a day after Walsh Heery failed to hand the prison over on schedule.
In correspondence with state officials, Walsh Heery officials have said the
state ought to pay them extra for bringing back subcontractors to finish work
this year. Pennsylvania advanced $2 million last spring in a “good faith” payment
to get work finished.
At a Senate budget meeting in Harrisburg in March, Wetzel
acknowledged that the prison was supposed to be finished in 2015. “It’s been a
terrible construction project,” Wetzel told members of the Senate
Appropriations Committee. “Primarily from substandard construction,” he added,
saying inspectors have rejected work many times as they moved through the
buildings. Heavily redacted 2015 and 2016 correspondence between Walsh
Heery and state agents show the contractors squabbled over inspection records
and the quality of air-conditioning, kitchen equipment, flooring, and many
other aspects of the project.
The general contractor and its insurers have been sued by
a string of subcontractors who say they haven’t been fully paid for their work.
Lawyers for Walsh Heery declined to comment. The state last winter brought in
Urban Engineers of Philadelphia to oversee the remaining inspections after its
construction manager, Hill International of Philadelphia, failed to deliver the
prison last year. Hill was paid over $20 million for its services.
Poor coordination among contractors and schedulers caused
cleaning subcontractor Caroline Thomas to take her crews away from the project
last year. Thomas says her crews were told repeatedly to conduct “final”
cleanings of the one-million-square-foot prison — as much floor space as in a
high-rise Philadelphia office tower — after flooring proved inadequate and
utility subcontractors left cleaned sites in disarray. After an arbitration
decision released her from the contract, Thomas said she never collected
$47,000 of the $225,000 her firm was owed.
Said Thomas, who said she has done state work in New
Jersey, California, Florida, and elsewhere without similar problems:
“This is the benefit of working for the State of Pennsylvania.”
Source: Philly.com
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