Hempfield to purchase former state prison site, demolish buildings

Hempfield will buy the former SCI Greensburg state prison and plans to work with the Westmoreland County Industrial Development Corporation to demolish the complex.

Supervisors on Monday approved spending $3.5 million to buy the 96-acre property on Route 119 between Youngwood and Greensburg.

The medium-security prison was originally 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.

Purpose of the purchase

Township manager Aaron Siko said the move is intended to prevent the approximately 350,000-square-foot facility from becoming a “nuisance structure similar to those found in other municipalities locally and abroad.”

“We’ve taken the opportunity to move forward on a project where we can help to eliminate blight, and also to partner with the Westmoreland County Industrial Development Corporation to achieve success in removing a blighted structure and repurposing the property for economic development,” he said.

Supervisor John Silvis compared the property to the Century III Mall site in West Mifflin, which has attracted trespassers and caught fire this spring, and noted that the township wants to move the property forward by demolishing the prison buildings.

“We’re just trying to move things along,” he said. “Hopefully, this is going to be a short-term thing.”

According to Siko, Hempfield Township hopes to close on the property in mid-July, and the funds to purchase it will come from the township’s bond issue from 2022. The township will seek additional grant funding to help offset the acquisition price, he said.

“We do have a mission to make sure that blight throughout our community is remediated, and this is obviously a very large instance of blight,” said Siko.

Next moves

Hempfield hopes to remove all buildings from the site, but the township does not yet have an estimate for how much the demolition and cleanup will cost.

Plans for what will happen to the site after the complex is removed are up in the air, said township supervisor chair George Reese, but he hopes to promote economic redevelopment there.

He described the effort to redevelop the site as “a gutsy project,” but one he is proud to be part of.

“We have a plan, and our mission is clear. We want to rid that property of that building, and there is no other way but to demolish it. Nobody buys prisons,” he said. “I want to get in, accomplish the mission and turn it over, and let someone develop that property for the good of our township.”

Reese cited the danger the site poses as a primary concern. He acknowledged that redeveloping the site would take some time, but he said it will be worth it.

“There is not a bigger risk to our first responders than to have a property like that sit within our municipality,” he said. “When we assume ownership of that, we start to move along with the county to get it taken care of and get rid of that.”

History of the site

The site was sold at auction to Verdant Holdings LLC in 2015 for $950,000, with Carlisle businessman David Goldsmith announcing at that time a plan to build a $150 million veteran rehabilitation center, a project that never materialized.

In 2018, the property was foreclosed upon after Verdant failed to make payments on a $5 million loan that used the property as collateral. For the past two years, it has been subject to bankruptcy proceedings. It sold at a sheriff’s sale in May to Midwest Bank of Detroit Lakes, Minn., for $146,862.

Midwest Bank was granted a $4.6 million judgement against Verdant Holdings in May 2021, according to court records.

At the time of the sheriff’s sale, nearly $85,000 in unpaid property taxes were owed to the township, school district and county. Another $57,800 was owed to the Municipal Authority of Westmoreland County. The debts were satisfied through the proceeds of the sheriff’s sale, according to court documents.