The state is looking to build a women’s re-entry center along River Road next to the Maine Correctional Center.

The Maine Department of Corrections is seeking approval from the Windham Planning Board to construct a 72-bed women’s inmate facility on River Road, several hundred feet to the east of the Maine Correctional Center.

On Feb. 9, Tony Panciocco, a Portland-based civil engineer, presented the board with the department’s sketch plan for a 24,000-square-foot building on the low-lying, eastern side of a 108-acre, state-owned parcel. The re-entry center would be sited 100 feet from the River Road right of way and about 950 feet south of the intersection of Mallison Falls and River roads. It would serve to transition female inmates from state correctional facilities back into their home communities.

According to Gary LaPlante, the department’s director of operations, the proposed structure, if approved, will replace the Southern Maine Re-Entry Center, a 64-bed facility in Alfred that the department leases. According to LaPlante, the department will own the new facility, if approved.

“The structure is being built due to Maine’s prison system needing to expand to meet the population growth and programming needs of female inmates,” LaPlante said. “The new Women’s Re-Entry Center is planned as having three housing units and a 72-bed capacity. The Re-Entry Center will provide more space for inmate rehabilitative programming, and for more inmate industry programming.”

The Maine Correctional Center houses male and female prisoners. The department built a 70-bed women’s unit on the site in July 2002. According to LaPlante, the department plans to put out bids for construction in the spring, and open the facility in 2016. When it opens, inmates at the Alfred center will be transferred to Windham, and staff at the Alfred center will be given the option of transferring, as well.

According to the Department of Corrections website, women at the Alfred center spend their time in educational and cognitive-behavioral classes and spend time volunteering in community service projects. The women also receive work assignments, which can include work in the community during the last six months of their sentences. To enter the center, the women must serve 120 days of their sentences, have approximately one year left to serve, and be classified as minimum security.

Last winter, the department unsuccessfully sought approval from the state Legislature to build a new $173 million facility to replace the Windham prison with a new one on the 220 acres the department owns along River and Mallison Falls roads. Gov. Paul LePage chose not to submit legislation for a bond that would fund the prison construction project. According to Scott Fish, the department’s director of special projects, the project proposal included plans for a women’s re-entry center.

Fish said the project would cost an estimated $10 million, if approved. The project does not require a bond, as the department plans to fund the construction from its capital fund, Fish said.

According to the sketch plan, the re-entry center would be sited on marshy former farmland.

“The project site on River Road is relatively low-lying, and is currently undeveloped,” the plan reads. “It has been used as a farm, and the cover is open grass meadow and scrub shrub with areas of marsh. The proposed site is on an area of upland that is surrounded on three sides by drainage ways that run through the site in northerly and easterly directions before discharging to Colley Wright Brook, a major tributary of the Presumpscot River.”

The plan includes a 40-space parking lot and a new pump station, as well as a 900-foot water main and a 900-foot gas main that would both extend west to the Maine Correctional Center. According to the plan, the center will generate an average daily water demand of 8,000 gallons. The plan also includes landscape design features “to soften and add interest to the public approach to the facility.”

According to Windham planner Amanda Lessard, the Department of Corrections will need to obtain site plan approval and a conditional use permit from the Planning Board, as well as approval from the Maine Department of Environmental Protection, in order to move forward with the project.

There are few neighbors in the rural area, which is close to the town’s Lot No. 1, where Windham’s original settlers pitched camp. A Boy Scout improved the granite lot marker a few years ago. However, Meris Bickford, the chief executive officer of the Maine State Society for the Protection of Animals, a horse rescue operation located across the road from the proposed facility, said she welcomed the new re-entry center.

Bickford said that she frequently employs volunteer laborers from the prison, and looks forward to having more women on the site. Women, she said, “have a greater affinity for horses.”

“We have a very collegial relationship with the Department of Corrections and we use volunteer inmate labor at the farm on a daily basis,” Bickford said. “I am happy to see additional resources at this facility. I would be happy to see women inmates who might have an interest or ability to work on the horse farm.”

“What they have are inmates who can volunteer to do barn work for free, and in the nonprofit world, free is good,” Bickford added.

The sprawling campus of the Maine Correctional Center in South Windham could expand if a new women’s re-entry center is approved.Courtesy photoThe Maine Department of Corrections plans to build a $10 million, 24,000-square-foot facility on the low-lying, eastern side of a 108-acre parcel off River Road. The 72-bed re-entry center would be sited about 950 feet south of the intersection of Mallison Falls and River roads.Image courtesy of the Department of Corrections