Point Mac prison ahead of schedule

WASILLA — If you haven’t heard a lot lately about the prison being built at Point MacKenzie, that’s probably because the project is humming along without any major foul-ups.

Russ Krafft, the Mat-Su Borough’s purchasing officer, said he receives regular updates from the contractor hired to build the prison, Neeser Construction.

“They track it based on what’s occurring today and they’re still estimating that we’ll be done early, but we’ve still got a year to go on this thing,” he said.

Which is why it’s hard to nail down exactly how early we’re talking about here.

“I anticipate that it will be done early, probably around late fall of 2011,” Krafft said.

That’s early, but just barely. The project was slated to take all of next year. The prison contains multiple buildings, all of which have to be built with security in mind. Overall, there is about 500,000 square feet of space.

Krafft said the most complex project was the service and visitations building. It was complex mostly because it will serve a variety of functions — medical, prisoner visitations and vocational education.

The contractor, he said, understands that complexity and chose to start on that building first.

“It’s quite aways along,” he said, but contrasted that to the housing units. “They didn’t even start working those housing units until this year.”

Still, there are one or two buildings that are essentially finished and waiting for the other buildings to be done. And as work progresses, as doors and furniture and appliances are brought in, the complex starts to look more and more like a prison.

“They’re getting to the point now where one of the things that they’re concerned about is making sure that none of their workers accidentally lock themselves in a cell,” Krafft said.

The prison is the culmination of about five years of work. It’s a borough project, but the finished product will eventually belong to the state, which will buy the facility over the course of a number of years through lease payments.

The process hasn’t been without hiccups. The bonds to fund the project didn’t sell right away. The borough took some heat — which has mostly died down as of late — over the process it used to provide the facility with sewer and water services.

But the borough has always seen the project — both during the construction phase and when the prison is in operation — as a job creator. The borough’s figures peg the construction payroll at $100 million and the number of jobs at the completed prison at 350 to 400.

Krafft said that it’s hard to nail down exact figures for subcontractors, but the figures he gets from Neeser show the contractor obtaining a very high percentage of its labor force locally.

“The number that I have on Neeser is about 95 to 97 percent,” Krafft said.

He said it’s probably a good bet that subcontractors have similar numbers.

“It’s always in the best interest of the contractor and the subcontractor to higher local guys,” Krafft said. “State Department of Labor specifies that if they live a specific distance away from this project they have to pay them an extra $75 per day for per diem.”

And, since the buildings are all enclosed, work hasn’t had to stop for the winter.

“Our numbers are starting to drop a little bit in terms of the people that are on site, but that’s just a natural trend because as buildings finish off you don’t need as many people,” Krafft said. “They’ll continue working right on through to the fall at this point.”

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2269.