SCI Greensburg was once a center of activity in Westmoreland County.
It housed around 900 inmates. It was staffed by 360 people, generating paychecks that fueled business throughout the area.
Then, in 2013, it closed. Overnight it went from being a place with purpose to a question mark. What would come next? What do you do with a 350,000-square-foot prison? How do you turn it from a place meant to keep people from leaving to a place that people choose to use?
Those are questions the state should have considered more in depth before it let the property go.
The state of Pennsylvania owns a lot of buildings and land. The Department of Corrections alone has a lot. There are 23 prisons and a boot camp that is really a short-term prison with a military motivation approach and focus on things like drug and alcohol treatment.
Since 2013, five prisons have been closed. In addition to SCI Greensburg, SCI Cresson’s cell doors slammed shut for the last time that same year. In 2017, it was SCI Pittsburgh, followed by SCI Graterford in 2018 and SCI Retreat in 2020.
The closures were done after changes to prison populations. Some were about declining numbers making consolidating inmates more effective. Others were about managing specific needs, like opening SCI Phoenix in 2018 as a newer and more functional maximum security facility. Both the openings and closings came after much thought.
More thought needs to be given to what happens next.
In just 10 years, the former SCI Greensburg property has been through a lot. It was purchased in 2015 by Verdant Holdings LLC for $995,000. The man behind that, David Goldsmith of Carlisle, had a $150 million veterans center dream that never came to fruition.
Just three years later, it was foreclosed on to recoup a $5 million loan. It has been tied up in bankruptcy and gone to sheriff’s sale. While it went back on the tax rolls after years of being state property, it also spent years without those taxes being paid before being satisfied by the sheriff’s sale. And now, after all that, Hempfield is buying it for $3.5 million. The township will work with Westmoreland County Industrial Development Corp. to dump even more money into demolition.
It is a proactive move to eliminate blight, according to township manager Aaron Siko. The partnership is to try to take a nuisance and turn it into something productive.
The state should have done that before walking away from the property like a shuttered Bed Bath and Beyond.
The Department of General Services is now looking for a buyer for the former SCI Pittsburgh, aka Western Penitentiary. A land use study and recommendations are being made, including consideration of the site’s value for film and television use. Costs of demolition are estimated as high as $50 million if the whole property is razed.
Let’s hope that the state takes more than just bids into consideration. The overall feasibility of the project needs to be better assessed. Hempfield is paying millions for the opportunity to spend even more money to eliminate a state problem. Pittsburgh doesn’t want to end up in the same position.