This story was originally produced by the Concord Monitor. NHPR is republishing it in partnership with the Granite State News Collaborative.
The state’s plans to build a new men’s prison may depend on a land deal with the City of Concord.
The state Department of Corrections hopes to acquire and subdivide a piece of city-owned land to build the new facility in the preferred site behind the current prisons, according to a state-commissioned design study obtained by the Monitor.
In return, Concord could get its hands on state-owned land along the Merrimack River near a planned rail trail extension.
“The city has an interest in state-owned land along the Merrimack River and are amenable to moving forward with a land swap and believe that it can occur concurrently with the continued development of design,” a team of consultants wrote in its report.
Concord officials have not said anything publicly about the potential deal.
Mayor Byron Champlin said in an interview he has not personally discussed a land swap with state officials, and he would not confirm whether he was aware of the potential deal. He also would not disclose whether it had been discussed by the city council, saying that any conversations about it would’ve occurred in nonpublic session. Deputy City Manager Matt Walsh declined to comment.
The state’s Right-to-Know law allows real estate negotiations to occur behind closed doors only when discussing the matter publicly, “would likely benefit a party or parties whose interests are adverse to those of the general community.”
To ease the space constraints required at the prison site, state officials approached Concord with a potential land trade, according to the state report. In exchange for 72 acres of city-owned land directly behind Blossom Hill Cemetery and southwest of the current women’s prison, the state would give Concord 117 acres along the river, where a section of the Merrimack River Greenway Trail is planned to be built.
“The campus is planned on approximately 65 acres, including roughly 11 acres of City-owned property adjacent to the abandoned quarry, allowing the project boundary to be thoughtfully adjusted to accommodate site constraints while maintaining a coherent and efficient campus framework,” the report states.
The planned 12.7-mile recreational trail will run north-south through Concord, connecting the Northern Rail Trail in Boscawen to Pembroke. Certain pieces of the trail are already open, while others are still in development and could take a decade to complete.
The City of Concord acquired the skinny tract of land where the old railroad sits back in February. The parcel identified in the study surrounds part of that strip.
Champlin would not comment on potential uses of that land but said in general, the city would acquire new land for several reasons, including controlling how it is developed.
“It also could be with an eye towards future use for a variety of reasons, for recreational purposes, things of that nature,” Champlin said. “There are a lot of different reasons that we would consider exchanging one piece of land for another in terms of what we would want to get out of it.”
Building the prison in the planned location — behind the women’s prison, which sits directly behind the current men’s facility on North State Street — requires a great deal of land for infrastructure and security needs, among others.
The state owns a vast stretch of land behind the prisons already, but obtaining that specific city-owned parcel would “assemble the most advantageous contiguous land area” for the new facility, the report said. Concord has owned that land since 1959, according to property records.
State officials are still weighing the prison project and have yet to draw up more detailed designs. Parts of the facility date back to 1878, and conditions are so dire that state officials worry the department will be hit with a lawsuit. At the same time, the replacement’s climbing $750 million price tag is a hard pill for state government to swallow.
Any land swap between the city and state would not affect the city’s tax base because both are tax-exempt under government use.
Champlin called the prison’s presence in Concord a “mixed blessing.” It creates jobs, he said, and even though not all prison employees live in Concord, they come to the city for work, which generates economic traffic. Still, he and other local officials said they would’ve liked to see the prison relocated — either to a less prominent area or out of the capital city entirely. The 700 acres occupied by the prisons and surrounding facilities are tax-exempt. The state pays the City of Concord $125,000 each year for emergency services at all its properties.
A land swap could be a way for Concord to eke out something more from the state government.
“The state generally can do what it wants, which is the challenge,” Champlin said. “Oftentimes the state is a good partner, but essentially we have to hope that they will listen to us, listen to our perspective and make adjustments accordingly. There’s no way that we can force them to do anything.”
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