Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 23, 1995 TAG: 9507240031
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium
The 1,267-bed Wallen's Ridge prison outside Big Stone Gap is set to open July 1998. It is vital to the state's plan to ease prison crowding, which is expected to worsen as Gov. George Allen's no-parole policy takes hold.
Corrections Director Ron Angelone said Thursday that construction could begin on schedule this year if a revised financing plan meets the approval of the Treasury Board.
The Allen administration Wednesday pulled plans for the prison from consideration by the Treasury Board, a debt watchdog panel, because its $105 million price tag was about $40 million over budget.
The prison will be paid for with bonds issued by the Big Stone Gap Redevelopment and Housing Authority. The state, which will cover debt service for the bonds, will lease the prison and take ownership in 20 years.
Chuck Miller, a spokesman for the Big Stone Gap Redevelopment and Housing Authority, said the administration mistook the $105 million figure as the cost of construction and site preparation. That figure also includes the cost of the issuance of the bonds as well as $16 million in specified forms of interest, he said.
``The cost of the prison is not $40 million over budget,'' Miller said.
Miller did say the prison cost probably will come in a little higher than the original $66 million proposal.
Angelone said the Corrections Department would work with Miller's agency on the cost of the project.
The delay on Wallen's Ridge follows questions about another proposed prison for Southwest Virginia, Red Onion, for which the state is spending millions preparing a site that government engineers said should be abandoned as unsafe.
by CNB