On a recent media tour of the now-completed Goose Creek Correctional Center, one reporter asked Joe Schmidt, commissioner of the Alaska Department of Corrections, what the area surrounding the prison -- on a remote stretch of road 30 minutes outside of Wasilla -- will look like in 10 years.
"Cañon City, Colorado," he replied simply. In 10 years, "somebody's going to say, who put the prison right in the middle of that city?"
That may be a bit of an exaggeration. Cañon City, about 120 miles southeast of Denver, saw its first prison built in 1871, so it has about a century lead on the area surrounding Goose Creek. But that prison, now the Colorado State Penitentiary, joined with several other new prisons built over the years in and around the city, and now Cañon City is the most populous city in Colorado's Fremont County, driven in large part by a different kind of "prison economy."
"Cañon City started out with a prison … and then another prison, and then people started moving in to be close to work, and pretty soon it's this whole developed area," Schmidt said, although he cautioned there's no guarantee the 1,536-bed facility will spur development in the area.
But it's interesting to consider that the contentious, $240 million Goose Creek prison was built precisely so about 1,000 Alaska prisoners housed in a privately-run Colorado facility could come home. Add in a prison payroll for as many as 350 employees and other potential development in the area, and there's a volatile recipe for sudden expansion on the remote stretch of road where Goose Creek is located.
A long drive
The drive from Anchorage to Goose Creek doesn't really start to feel remote until you've gone through Wasilla, past a rat's nest of crooked power poles lining Knik-Goose Bay Road, and cut toward Port MacKenzie by way of Point MacKenzie Road. Although the road is maintained, homes quickly thin out. Only a few lonely cars travel this far.
Schmidt and the Department of Corrections have pushed the Goose Creek facility as potentially good for prisoners, who would be closer to their support group of family and friends. That could lower recidivism rates.
"A place to live, sober support and employment are the three key aspects to re-entry," into society, Schmidt said. "The rural folks are still going to have a hard time getting here, but it's going to be better than out of state. If (prisoners) can stay connected to those folks who are going to help them upon release, we think that's going to have an advantage to their successful reintegration."
Schmidt admits, however, that evidence that prisoners housed near family or their support group have a lower rate of recidivism is largely anecdotal.
But there is also anecdotal evidence that warns against prisoners or drug rehabilitation patients returning to their old circles of acquaintance, who may have been partially responsible for an initial brush with the law. At least one drug and alcohol treatment organization warns against hanging out with friends engaging in the activity that led to trouble.
While the question of whether the prison will ease recidivism is debatable, the facts remain that Goose Creek is a relatively remote location, that it will need to be staffed by administrators, guards and support personnel. Lee Sherman, deputy director of institutions at Corrections, said that the prison will employ nearly 350 people, including 245 correctional officers.
That number would be enough to make the prison one of the Matanuska-Susitna Borough's largest employers. In 2010, the MSB School District employed the most people, at more than 2,400. The largest private employers are the Mat-Su Regional Medical Center and Wal-Mart, with between 500 and 750 employees. Unemployment in the borough was listed at 7.6 percent in September, higher than the state average of 6.7 percent.
Schmidt said 67 current correctional employees have already expressed interest in transferring to Goose Creek. Other people living in the Palmer-Wasilla area may also be interested in working at the prison, since the distance from the Valley to Anchorage is farther than the distance to Goose Creek, and they wouldn't face the Glenn Highway's busy rush hour traffic.
There's another wrinkle to all of this, as well, something that may lend a bit of credence to Schmidt's prediction of Cañon City-like growth from the new prison.
Goose Creek may be a 90-minute drive from Anchorage now, but it's only nine miles north of Port MacKenzie, the proposed site for one end of a bridge linking Anchorage to the Mat-Su Borough across the isthmus of Knik Arm.
The Knik Arm bridge has been a hot-button issue for years -- similar to the controversy surrounding the Goose Creek prison itself. It would stretch from Government Hill in Anchorage 2 miles to Point MacKenzie.
The Knik Arm Bridge has been dubbed a "bridge to nowhere," proposed to accommodate the travel needs of a projected 550,000 residents in the Anchorage and Mat-Su areas by 2034. If it were built, that currently lonely stretch of Point MacKenzie Road could become another heavily-traveled route from Anchorage to Wasilla.
It's telling, then, that a map with directions to the prison sent by the Department of Corrections lists not only the distance of Goose Creek from Wasilla, but also its distance from Port MacKenzie, and Port MacKenzie's distance from Anchorage.
There is plenty of land in between. Just past the turn onto Knik-Goose Bay Road from Point MacKenzie Road, CIRI Land Development has a sign advertising more than 2,300 acres for sale.
The Knik Arm bridge is a long way from even beginning construction -- with plenty of opposition along the way. But if it were built, that remote prison would suddenly get a lot closer to Alaska's largest city.
Eggs in the borough basket
The Mat-Su Borough was one of only two communities to take advantage of Senate Bill 65, which allowed the Department of Corrections to enter into lease agreements with local governments for new or improved facilities.
"The other communities voted not to move forward with it, for whatever reason," Schmidt said.
According to Russ Krafft, who oversees purchasing for the Mat-Su Borough, the facility was built by the borough and will now be leased back to the state for almost $18 million a year.
The borough clearly sees the project as a wise investment.
"I think if you look at even what the Mat-Su School District is doing -- we're getting ready to build a junior/senior high school on (the south) end of Knik-Goose Bay Road," Krafft said. "This is one of the areas out here that is growing tremendously already, so you're seeing a population shift into this direction."
The Valley already has a jumpstart on population growth. According to the Mat-Su Borough's 2011 Annual Report, Mat-Su has been Alaska's fastest-growing region for more than 15 years, with an annual average population increase of 5 percent in the last decade.
Schmidt said that it's likely that people who work at the prison might move closer to it. Krafft seemed to agree that a southerly movement in Wasilla's population boom could occur once the prison ramps up.
"This facility, certainly as people start working out here, it means that entrepreneurs are going to work it," he said. "They're going to find land. They're going to build businesses to make money."
Krafft didn't downplay the importance of the proposed Knik Arm bridge, either -- although he spoke as though it were a sure thing.
"The bridge is probably more of an economic driver into this area than this facility," Krafft said. "When you open it up to Anchorage, that's when you're really going to see the growth explode out here."
Contact Ben Anderson at ben(at)alaskadispatch.com