The prison entrance is shown.
City Councilman Bobby Henon thought of Bill №150406 as a mere formality, a minor bit of governmental protocol the likes of which pass relatively unnoticed countless times on a legislative calendar.
Yet, he wasn’t exactly surprised by the tsunami of criticism that barreled his way — and still does in fact — after the public learned of the city’s plan to spend about $7.26 million to buy a 58-acre parcel along the Delaware River in hope of building a new prison there someday.
“It’s an uncomfortable conversation, talking about prisons,” Henon told the Northeast Times on Monday. “This has become a political issue in Council.”
A new prison, administration officials say, would allow the city to replace the 88-year-old, dilapidated and obsolete House of Correction while helping to relieve overcrowding among the 8,000 inmates of the city’s prison system.
Critics from Henon’s district and well beyond argue that the city should be spending more money on schools and less on prisons, and that riverfront property is too scarce, too valuable a resource to waste on a public works project that doesn’t take advantage of the water. Administration officials acknowledge that it would cost hundreds of millions of dollars to actually build a new prison, although Henon’s bill does not address construction costs. It would only allow the city to buy the land.
Those issues and more were expected to be key talking points during the monthly meeting of the Holmesburg Civic Association Tuesday night, a session that Henon planned to attend along with Prisons Commissioner Louis Giorla and Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Michael Resnick. The topics will likely be at the forefront again this Wednesday evening when Henon and Giorla conduct a public “tele town hall” conference call for the public from 6 to 7 p.m. Residents can access the call by dialing 877–229–8493 and using ID code 112405.
Ultimately, Henon expects the full Council to vote on the bill this Thursday or next, just before the legislative body recesses for the summer. And he believes the bill has the votes to pass, despite opposition from some of his colleagues.
For the record, the concept isn’t even Henon’s own. The language of the bill came directly from the Nutter administration, which in typical fashion asked Henon to introduce it because the property falls within his 6th District. The address is 7777-R State Road, with the “R” differentiating it from an adjoining, separately owned parcel with the same numerical address.
“This is the administration’s bill and it’s in their budget for the acquisition of land,” Henon said. “So this is something they’ve been looking at for over a year.”
City records identify the owner as 7777 Philadelphia PA Loan Associates, a bank-controlled limited liability company that acquired the land at sheriff’s sale in January 2014 after a previous owner seeking to build condominiums there had defaulted on a multi-million-dollar loan from the same bank. The assessed value is $7.34 million.
Henon introduced the bill on April 30. Council’s Committee on Public Property, which Henon chairs, passed it on May 11. The bill had its first reading before the full council on May 14. It was due for a second reading and possible vote one week later, but a May 19 decision by the City Planning Commission delayed that schedule.
The commission’s professional staff had endorsed the bill, according to a Daily News report. Yet, the commission voted, 5–0 with one abstention, to disapprove of the bill. Mayfair resident Pete McDermott provided compelling opposition testimony during the commission hearing, claiming on one hand that the city is over-valuing the parcel, while also arguing that the site is well-suited for a shipping terminal or other commercial enterprise due to its river access. The commission’s vote is not binding to Council, which tabled the bill anyway.
Other vocal opponents have included Solomon Jones, an author, newspaper columnist and morning host on Philadelphia’s only black-owned talk radio station WURD; as well as Matt Wolfe, a Republican ward leader from West Philly whose guest column on the topic was published by the Inquirer. Mayoral frontrunner Jim Kenney also panned the idea just prior to last month’s primary election, stating that if the city bought the property, he would seek to use it for inmate job training and reentry programs rather than new prison cells.
“Some of the constituents who have voiced their concerns live nowhere near the facility,” the councilman said.
He thinks that they’ve got their facts wrong, too — that prisons and schools have totally different funding streams, that a new prison would actually benefit inmates now housed in subpar conditions and that replacing the old prison would actually save the city money in the long run.
“Our options are this: take a look at this land and do our due diligence, which I support,” Henon said. “The other option is to have the federal government step in and, at a greater cost to the city, set certain specs for a new prison. Another option is to re-authorize a property in the neighborhood, the old Holmesburg Prison, which I am vehemently opposed to.”
Prison inmates claiming overcrowding and poor living conditions have targeted the city in numerous civil rights lawsuits over decades. As a result, the city’s prisons were under direct supervision of federal and state courts with inmate populations capped from the late 1970s until 2003. One pending suit is scheduled to go to trial next year.
The 7777-R State Road property abuts the site of Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility, which opened in 1995. To the rear of that is the city’s newest prison, Riverside Correctional Facility for women, opened in 2004.
An earlier House of Correction opened in 1874. The city razed that building in 1925 and used the same materials to build a new prison on the same site. It has the classic “wagon wheel” configuration with cell blocks radiating as spokes from a central administrative hub. Although state-of-the-art in the late 19th century, the style is now antiquated. CFCF, for instance, has a modular pod design that helps staff keep inmates segregated in cell blocks and greatly reduces the need to move large groups of inmates from one part of the facility to another.
The House of Correction was designed for 1,250 inmates, but houses about 1,500. And it’s falling apart.
“It is in very, very bad condition. The infrastructure is crumbling,” Henon said. “The technology is non-existent. There are no automatic door locks. The employees go there every day and work in dangerous conditions. … I agree we need to decrease our prison population, but even if we decrease it to 6,000, we would still need to replace the House of Correction.”
As for the 7777-R State Road property, Henon thinks some folks are over-selling its potential. Following the closing of a former shipping facility there, Henon’s predecessor in Council, the late Joan Krajewski, had the zoning changed in 2005 from industrial to residential. A housing developer reportedly spent $14 million to buy the land as part of a larger parcel in 2007. The housing development never got off the ground and led to the aforementioned loan default and sheriff’s sale.
Today, the site’s neighbors include the existing prisons, along with the Riverview Home for low-income seniors on one side and a Waste Management facility on the other, as well as the Capital Auto Auction. Any prison development would not jeopardize a riverfront recreational trail planned for the waterfront as part of the Delaware River City Corporation’s Greenway Plan for the North Delaware.
“It’s been vacant for 20 years. It’s not a valuable waterfront property at all,” Henon said. “If it were valuable, somebody would have had the interest in doing (something with) it. There has been no interest.” ••
Aging poorly: This pre-1990s aerial photo shows the obsolete wagon wheel configuration of the city’s 88-year-old House of Correction. The city is now weighing options to replace it. TIMES FILE PHOTO
