THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, February 17, 1997 TAG: 9702170037
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MATTHEW DOLAN, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHESAPEAKE LENGTH: 80 lines
Drive by fast enough and it looks like a two-story, red-brick elementary school with a grand front staircase. Stately columns of pine trees in Chesapeake City Park to the south and Greenbrier Country Club's 13th hole to the east highlight its bucolic vista.
But slow down a little and see why there are no children playing in the yard. Razor wire tops its chain-link fence and rows of bars darken its windows.
This is Tidewater Correctional Unit No. 22, a dormitory-style state women's prison older than the city itself. But with the encroachment of the recently built city park and a boom in nearby housing developments, some officials and citizens want it gone.
An amendment attached to a bill moving through the General Assembly would eventually strip the prison's entire $1.7 million budget. The Senate passed the bill earlier this year but the House has yet to include it as part of its budget, said Anna D'Antonio, the city's legislative liaison to the Assembly.
The amendment's sponsor, Sen. Mark L. Earley, R-Chesapeake, said the measure would force the prison's closure, a process that would begin in July.
``It would provide a greater level of safety for that neighborhood,'' Earley said.
Earley said he is also supporting legislation to temporarily close the city's other state prison, State Brides Correctional Center, for renovations in 1998.
City officials, prompted in part by Mayor William E. Ward, placed the request to close the Tidewater Correctional Unit on its 22-item legislative priority list for the current session, D'Antonio said. They believe the rapidly developing area is no longer an appropriate location for a prison, he said.
The city public school system has plans to open a 1,200-student middle school in the year 2000 on a 40-acre site just down the road from the prison. Wedgewood Estates, just across the street, is one of the several single-family residential developments dotting the neighborhood.
The annual Jubilee every May in the adjacent city park attracted about 150,000 last year, who gathered for food and music only yards from the prison's outdoor recreation yard.
Tidewater Correctional predates the construction of those housing developments and their neighboring park by decades, Mayor Ward said, but ``some of the citizens thought the prison is now incompatible in that neighborhood, with houses so close.''
Calling the park one of the city's ``bright lights,'' Ward said the prison is a blemish on the face of the city's increasingly upscale neighborhood.
What would happen to inmates now housed at the facility or whether another prison would be built in the city were still unknown, Ward said.
``That's not our responsibility; that's up to the state.''
Earley said the state has a short-term oversupply of prison beds that could accommodate the prisoners at the facility. State Department of Corrections spokesman David Botkins said it would be premature to say where inmates or staff would relocate if the prison were shut down.
The prison in the Greenbrier section opened in the early 1950s as a ``road camp,'' and was officially named Tidewater Correctional in 1957, according to Botkins. Correctional Unit No. 22 houses 110 women inmates, but was co-ed before 1995.
Rebecca Sawyer, 42, a recent visitor to the nearby park and lifelong city resident, said she hardly notices the prison anymore.
``There have never been any problems as far as I can remember,'' Sawyer said. ``They keep up the grounds, and I don't think those prisoners are too dangerous.''
Botkins said the prison has ``an outstanding record for safety and security.'' Today's inmates at No. 22, he added, are classified as minimum- to medium-security.
But that security classification does not assuage Annette Todd's fears.
Todd, 28, a Norfolk resident searching for a new home in the city's Greenbrier section, said she still has safety concerns.
``You know, if anyone escapes, this is a perfect place to grab a hostage,'' said Todd, standing nearby with watchful eyes on her 3-year-old son, Chad. ILLUSTRATION: Color Map
Women's prison
KEYWORDS: CORRECTIONAL CENTER GREENBRIER TIDEWATER
CORRECTIONAL UNIT NO.22 GENERAL ASSEMBLY PROPOSED BILL
FUNDING WOMEN'S PRISON