WESTVILLE — A major state construction project slated for LaPorte County is heading back to the drawing board.
The State Budget Committee recently learned the projected cost of demolishing most of the Westville Correctional Facility and rebuilding it on the same site has soared to $1.2 billion, up from an estimated $400 million two years ago.
In an interview with The Times, Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb said last week his administration remains committed to getting the project done.
But the governor acknowledged it likely will require changing the plans, postponing construction or increasing state appropriations or some combination of the three, to make it happen.
"This doesn't fall into the category of: I just want to build another prison. It's not a want, it's a need. So how is the question. And we'll look at that in the four months ahead," Holcomb said. "We can get creative."
The current Westville prison houses up to 3,476 offenders in a 76-year-old, 1-million-square-foot compound originally designed as a state mental health facility that was converted to a prison in 1976.
It does not meet modern safety and security standards or the operational needs of staff and offenders, and due to the age and weathering of the facility, it cannot be satisfactorily renovated, state records show.
Hoosier lawmakers last year appropriated $400 million in the 2022-23 state budget to demolish and rebuild the prison on the same 117-acre property in Westville, including new inmate housing, administration, programming and treatment facilities. The newer high-security unit would be retained.
State Budget Director Zac Jackson said the original cost to redo Westville was estimated in late 2020 or early 2021 prior to inflation driving up the costs of building materials and workers across the country.
"With these big projects, it might take you at least a full year just to do the design," Jackson said. "As the design work is now coming back over the last few months, we're realizing, 'Wow, there's no way we're going to do what we wanted to do at Westville for $400 million with the increased price of steel, increased price of concrete and the price of labor.'"
Westville is not alone. Jackson said other major capital projects included in recent state budgets are seeing similar soaring costs, including the single-campus consolidation of the state's deaf and blind schools, new inns at Potato Creek and Prophetstown state parks, a new Swine Barn at the Indiana State Fairgrounds and a new State Archives building in downtown Indianapolis.
"We've kind of had to take a piecemeal approach," Jackson said. "Maybe it's a delay, maybe it's find extra money or maybe it's just pare down the project and reduce the scope that was contemplated in order to proceed."
State Sen. Ryan Mishler, R-Bremen, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said additional money for the projects can be included in the 2024-25 state budget lawmakers will begin crafting when the General Assembly convenes its regular session Jan. 9.
Though he cautioned doing so will require holding down spending increases elsewhere, since there's only so much money to go around.
At the same time, state Sen. Liz Brown, R-Fort Wayne, said lawmakers consistently have identified Westville and the other projects as top state priorities and should do what it takes to bring them to fruition.
"We've voted on them. We've said they need to be funded. I don't think we should partially fund them or tell them to delay it even more when we just have more and more projects in the queue," Brown said. "We need to shore these up."
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