THOMSON, Ill. — The new signs at the north and
south ends of Thomson give the town’s population as 600, but nobody
remembers 50 people moving in since the last census. In this small
Mississippi River community in northwest Illinois, they surely would have
noticed. Dubbed by locals the “Melon Capital of the World,”
Thomson is the quintessential small town, where everybody seems to know
everybody else’s business. But there is one thing in Thomson no one knows or can
explain: Why, after nearly five years, the state of Illinois hasn’t
opened the nearby $143 million maximum-security prison. A few residents say they’ve heard that the
prison is sinking into the soft, sandy soil on which it was built, but
those rumors have no foundation, state officials say. The reason this new
prison sits empty is simpler: Thanks to the state’s budget woes, the
Illinois Department of Corrections hasn’t had the money to operate
the Thomson Correctional Center. So the town of Thomson waits. Merrie Jo Enloe’s family moved to Thomson when
she was a child, in the early 1950s, and she’s been the village
president since
1983. Enloe says she stayed in Thomson because it’s a “quiet,
peaceful community,” but the town has seen better days, and good jobs
are hard to find. “Carroll County has had the third-largest
unemployment rate of all the counties in the state of Illinois,” she
says. “It’s been running that way now for the last five
years.” Unless you’re a farmer, teacher, or otherwise
self-employed, the best opportunities involve second-shift factory work
grinding metal or packaging dog food in neighboring towns. These are
considered good-paying jobs in Thomson, where the average household income,
according to the U.S. Census Bureau, is $36,667. The prison was supposed to change all that, with
more than 750 jobs. As Jack Hartwig, former warden of the empty prison,
says, “Anytime you can bring that kind of an industry to a town that
needs jobs, open arms is what you get as a welcome sign.” Former Gov. Jim Edgar put plans for the
maximum-security prison in motion in the late 1990s. At the time he left
office, a site hadn’t been selected, and several communities were in
the hunt. “When they offered to put it here, it was
something that I personally felt would be good for the area,” Enloe
says. Not everyone was thrilled, despite the fact that the
town would earn approximately a quarter-million dollars a year by hosting
the prison — an amount that Enloe says is more than three times the
town’s current operating budget. But when any major change is about
to take place, there’s bound to be opposition. A few residents even sold their homes and left, Enloe
says. These people didn’t like the looks of a prison, she says, and a
few were “concerned about the criminal element that might follow the
inmates themselves — that there might be more crime.”
The prison sits on property donated to the state
by Galena, Ill.-based Alliant Energy. Donna French, former owner of the
popular Watermelon Café, says her family used to own that land when
she was growing up. At the time Alliant donated it, one of her brothers was
renting it to grow watermelons. The power company purchased the land from her parents
with the intention of putting a power plant there but found that the
ground, which was riverbed before the Mississippi River shifted course,
wasn’t stable enough, she says. If the ground could not hold a power
company, many began to wonder, what made anyone think it would hold a
prison? Mark Gerardot, project manager for the Illinois
Capital Development Board, says that the sand was actually “a
blessing” during construction. “The sand helped because there’s usually
times when you get so much rain that it will stop work and everybody goes
home for the day,” Gerardot says. “Up there, if it rained,
they’d wait a half hour after it quit and they’d continue work.
. . . The rain would just drain away.” Gerardot’s agency completed construction and
turned over the prison to the Department of Corrections in May 2001. It remains the newest and most modern
maximum-security facility in the state and one of the most expensive public
works projects in state history, says Sergio Molina, IDOC spokesman. It’s easy to see why. The 146-acre complex comprises 15 buildings,
including eight cell houses with 1,600 maximum-security cells.
There’s also a 200-bed minimum-security unit that Gov. Rod
Blagojevich wants to open this fall, contingent on funding from the General
Assembly. A visit shows that the facility’s ready for
inmates. The concrete floors are shiny, as though they’ve just been
poured; the only sound is trickling water, left running to protect the
expensive plumbing system. The control room looks like something from the
Sci-Fi Channel, ready to take off at any given moment. Touch screens
control lights, cell doors, and cameras. Even toilets can be shut down
— that’ll stop prisoners from trying to flush away contraband
during a shakedown. Of course, with 350 cameras on the premises, it’d
be hard for them to hide anything in the first place. The kitchen is full of shining stainless-steel
equipment, most still wrapped in the manufacturer’s packing; the
offices are complete with new swivel chairs that reek of new plastic.
Taxpayers pay nearly $2 million a year just to keep the lights and phones
on at Thomson, according to a report released late last month by the state
auditor general. “What most people don’t realize is that
we’re ready to go,” says assistant chief engineer Dan Sutzmore,
head of operations and facilities. “People think it’s just
sitting out here completely empty, but everything’s ready to go
— office supplies, kitchen equipment, and mattresses. All we need is
food and people.” Because there’s little to look after, Sutzmore
and assistant warden Vickie Wright are the only two state employees who
work at the prison. A private company has a security guard stationed there
to deal with trespassers. Every now and then, discarded beer cases are
collected from the prison grounds. Hartwig, warden of the empty prison for its first
three years until he took early retirement, says that his stint there was
like “getting a large city ready to run — getting everything
you need to manage that city without the people, because tomorrow they may
be there.” Area residents who have waited for the prison to open
have his sympathy, Hartwig says. “Having it built is like waving the candy in
front of a kid for four years and saying, ‘You can’t eat it
yet,’ ” Hartwig says. “Pretty soon, they’re gonna
lose interest or they’re gonna get mad or they’re just gonna
take it.”
As soon as ground was broken for the prison,
residents began preparing to cash in. New businesses were built and old
ones remodeled; homes were renovated, built, and put on the market. Thomson
no longer was just a place where people lived because they liked to stare
at the stars, listen to the corn rustle, or catch fish. Because of the prison, lawyer and longtime resident
Lawrence Bruckner got into the hotel business. He opened the Thomson House
Café and Lodge at a cost of $750,000, but business has been
horrible, he says. “If I didn’t have it paid for, I would
have gone bankrupt three years ago,” Bruckner says. “I mean, we
do well in the summer because of the fishermen and people going to Galena,
but six months out of the year it’s an utter disaster.” The Thomson House has been for sale since the day it
opened — and that’s how Bruckner planned it. “Once they
got the bond authorization, I said, ‘It’s a done deal’
— never thinking that they would build it and then not open
it,” he says. Bruckner was so angry, he ran for the Republican
nomination for lieutenant governor, making opening the prison the focus of
his campaign. He came in fourth in a field of four in last month’s
primary election. Other residents share Bruckner’s frustrations
and disappointment. French, who sank nearly $70,000 into the relocation
of her Watermelon Café to larger quarters, struggled for three years
before recently selling her business. “At first, business was absolutely
excellent,” she says, “but it just died down — just like
everything else in our town.” Wayne James may have the saddest story. When James,
longtime owner of a local auto-repair shop, heard that the prison was
coming, he invested his entire life savings in a new gas station. After
four years and a staggering $850,000 in debt, James had to seek bankruptcy
protection. Today he works the second shift at a factory near Thomson. “It’s such a shame,” French says of
James’ loss. “He did everything he possibly could to keep it
going.”
Since 2001, Thomson residents have made numerous
trips to Springfield, hoping to get state government to open their prison.
They’ve managed to secure grants to pay for their new water tower.
This year, there’s a glimmer of hope: The Blagojevich administration
wants to open the minimum-security portion of the prison, but that’s
only a small part of the facility. If lawmakers move quickly on the governor’s
request, the minimum-security portion could be operating by September, says
Derek Schnapp, an IDOC spokesman. The department needs about $1.2 million
to begin hiring and training staff and another $6.5 million for operations
in fiscal year 2007, he says. What about the maximum-security part? “That’s not even been discussed,”
Schnapp says. Hartwig, the former warden, says that the town
shouldn’t give up hope. “They certainly have no intention of building a
$140 million capital asset and letting it sit empty forever. It will work.
It will be safe. It will be a good neighbor.”
This article appears in Apr 13-19, 2006.
