TOWN WATERTOWN, New York (WWNY) – It has been almost 500 days since the doors of the Watertown Correctional Facility were closed for good, but some local representatives got a chance to tour the facility Thursday.
It was all to help community leaders brainstorm ways to reuse the prison property, which was shuttered in March 2021.
The state denied our request to go on the tour, but we spoke with elected officials about it after it ended.
“I think it’s hard to understand how big it is until you get up here and you walk it and you look and see how many buildings are involved,” said State Senator Patty Ritchie (R. – 48th District).
This past spring, Governor Kathy Hochul launched the Prison Redevelopment Commission, a 15-member panel charged with figuring out what to do with closed state prisons.
Ritchie says this tour was a chance to brainstorm what could be next for Watertown Correctional. One idea being floated is finding a way to use the facility to help with Watertown’s homeless and mental health challenges.
“We need to find something that could be housed here, something that will help the area economically and you want to make sure this doesn’t continue to decay,” said Ritchie.
Assemblyman Ken Blankenbush (R. – 117th District) said, “I look forward to working with Empire State Development and our local partners in re-purposing the facility for future use. It is a massive property that has the potential to create hundreds of jobs and stir economic activity in the Watertown area.”
Empire State Development said in a statement: “We look forward to fruitful discussions as we look to find the best outcome for Watertown and the surrounding communities that relied heavily on this facility for their livelihoods.”
At the time it closed, 200 union workers and an additional 200 employees were reassigned to other facilities.
The same sort of tour will happen again Friday at the former Ogdensburg Correctional Facility, which closed in March of this year. State and local officials will tour that facility as well as parts of the empty psychiatric center.
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