Hempfield closes on former state prison property, bulks up security

Hempfield officially received a full box of keys to the former SCI Greensburg state prison facility after closing on the property last week.

“There are a lot of keys to a prison, I found out,” township manager Aaron Siko joked at a meeting this week.

The township supervisors announced the plans to purchase the 96-acre property on Route 119 between Youngwood and Greensburg for $3.5 million at a meeting in late June.

Hempfield plans to demolish all the buildings on the site and is working with the Westmoreland County Industrial Development Corp. to clean up and manage the property for future use.

“The goal still for this project is to get the building knocked down as quickly as we possibly can,” Siko said.

The medium-security prison was built to hold 900 inmates and employed 360 people. It closed in June 2013, with state officials citing maintenance costs and a declining inmate population as reasons for the closure. It has been vacant since.

Next steps

Township officials are focusing on bulking up security at the 350,000-square-foot facility. An additional gate has been installed, and padlocks have been added to existing gates.

“(We’re) making sure that all doors, windows and openings are secured,” Siko said. “It’s a prison, so it’s pretty well secure already, but we will take some additional action on some of the outbuildings and things like that, just to make sure that we are deterring the public, mainly by blocking vehicular access to the site.”

The next steps include a vote on the intergovernmental agreement between the township and the Westmoreland IDC at the supervisors meeting Monday.

Jason Rigone, executive director of the Industrial Development Corp., said the group will take on more of a project management role at the property through the agreement, if it is approved.

“These projects are always done in partnership with the local municipality, with our state partners and with other local agencies,” he said. “Like any project, we’re going to be leveraging everyone’s capacities, capabilities and skills to bring the project to a successful conclusion.”

He noted the SCI Greensburg project is large and has some “challenges associated with it,” but he doesn’t consider those challenges “insurmountable.”

“Both entities will be working arm-in-arm concurrently to address the issue that’s there,” Rigone said.

The township also will vote on a farm lease agreement for managing grass mowing at the property.

Under the farm lease program, farmers would bid and pay the township to mow the property a few times a year with commercial farming equipment and take the hay for themselves.

“They’d be paying the township per acre,” Siko said. “It’s something that’s done with the Westmoreland County Parks and Recreation because they own a lot of acreage across the county.”

Siko doesn’t expect to see major activity on the property for a few more months. The township is paying for the purchase from its 2022 bond issue and will seek additional grant funding to help offset the price, Siko said.

“At this point, the board of supervisors, Hempfield Township and the Industrial Development Corp. through the county are going to be going out to seek state and federal dollars to try to help mitigate the costs of demolishing the facility,” Siko said.