“I can’t thank you enough for being here,” Warden Cheryl Steberger told participants as the latest listening session on the new Lancaster County correctional facility wrapped up Wednesday evening.
She assured them that she and her staff took their input seriously; and that they written down every comment and suggestion and would be reviewing them in coming days.
The session, held at the Lancaster County Government Center, gave members of the public a chance to share their thoughts on the draft schematic design for the facility. Several dozen people attended, many of them advocates who regularly attend Prison Board meetings and have followed the planning process intently.
Introduced last week, the schematic design takes the needs assessment and program that were previously developed and translates them into preliminary floor plans, site plans and renderings.
The county commissioners are expected to approve it, possibly with revisions, in coming weeks, though a date for their vote has not been settled. Once approved, the schematic design will serve as the basis for the next two phases of the planning process: Design development and the production of detailed construction drawings and related documents.
Drafts of the schematic design report (PDF) and an accompanying presentation (PDF) are available in the Document Center of the correctional facility project website.
As currently depicted, the correctional facility would provide 994 beds in a one-story, 433,018-square-foot facility. There would be abundant space for classes, mental health counseling and other programming, which activists and prison staff alike say is essential.
Architectural firm TranSystems is spearheading the design effort with input from owner’s representative CGL and a committee of prison and county staff. Leaders have emphasized that the schematic design is preliminary and subject to change as work continues. They tentatively hope to break ground in late 2025.
On Wednesday, following some preliminary remarks, attendees divided into groups and rotated in 15-minute intervals through three topic areas: Housing, wellness and site design. Design team members were on hand to provide summaries and answer questions, while county staff took notes.
Here’s some of what was said:
Housing
Inmates will be housed in 21 units with up to 64 beds each. Every unit will have a large dayroom with a skylight or clerestory providing abundant light. Individual cells will not have exterior windows, Deputy Warden Miguel Castro said: The goal is to get inmates out into the dayroom as much as possible during waking hours, interacting and engaging with programming.
Traffic in and out of units will be minimized, Steberger said. As much as possible, services will be brought to the inmates, not the other way around. Units will be grouped into clusters, and each cluster will have some shared space. The intent is to maximize both efficiency and adaptability, allowing activities to take place on the unit level or cluster level as appropriate.
Each unit will have a recreation area, Castro and TranSystems’ Brian Endler said: It will be enclosed, but large screened openings will provide access to outdoor air. At present there are no plans for an outdoor yard: It would be difficult to maintain and present security challenges, Steberger and Castro said.
Asked about video and other technology for classrooms, TranSystems Brian Endler said those details will be worked out later on. Steberger said she likes the idea of video bulletin boards in the units, something she and her staff saw in some of the correctional facilities they toured during their research.
Wellness
The prison’s wellness center will allow much more medical care to be provided on site than is possible at the current County Prison. Among other things, that will reduce the need for frequent outside “med runs” and for correctional officers to guard inmates admitted to local hospitals, factors that are driving significant overtime costs.
The center will look much like its non-correctional counterparts and will offer both medical and dental care, Deputy Warden Joe Shiffer said. It will have inpatient rooms, including infectious isolation rooms, examination and treatment space and its own pharmacy.
In general, routine medications will be administered not at the center but on the housing units, with medications transported in and out on secure med carts. The hope is that the Medication Assisted Treatment program for substance abuse can be administered on each unit, but that’s still being evaluated, Shiffer said.
Medical services could also be offered in shared cluster space, Brett Firfer of CGL said, offering an intermediate level between the units and the wellness enter and providing for a flexible and adjustable continuum of care.
Mary Glazier of Ambassadors for Hope, a local organziation supporting children of incarcerated parents, asked about visitation facilities. There will be dedicated space near the prison entrance for child visitation, including court-ordered visits but not limited to them, Shiffer said. Areas for video and noncontact visitation will be incorporated on each unit, Steberger said.
Site
Officials have emphasized that the facility will be inconspicuous, mostly hidden by the trees that ring the peninsula where it will be built. Lighting will be well shielded and not visible offsite, Dave Miller of Rettew said.
Utilities such as water and sewer will have enough capacity to serve a 1,200-bed complex, to allow for potential future expansion, county Director of General Services Bob Devonshire Jr. said. The size of the prison’s “core” spaces, such as its kitchen, is currently based on 1,000 beds; the wellness center is based on 1,200 beds, he said.
Public health and opioid policy researcher Gail Groves Scott asked about gardens, which could provide fresh produce and therapeutic activity. There’s space for outdoor gardening, Devonshire said, noting it would be Warden Steberger’s decision whether to include it.
Kent Kroehler, secretary of the advocacy group Have a Heart, asked what could be done to add character to the generic institutional exterior depicted in the current renderings. He has said on several occasions that the correctional facility should be a point of pride for Lancaster County residents, even something they show off to visitors.
Along the same lines, he and the Rev. Jason Perkowski asked that thought be given to the area where individuals who have completed their time are released to family and friends. It shouldn’t just be utilitarian, they said. Rather, its design should acknowledge the significance of what is taking place there and allow for commemorations of reunion and homecoming.
