'We need the prison open': Broken promises leave village of Thomson skeptical

By SAM SMITH  ssmith@svnmail.com  800-798-4085, ext. 525

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A CNN televison crew interviews patrons at the Sunrise Restaurant next to the prison Sunday afternoon. The Carroll County village has been the center of a media storm as the federal goverment looks to buy the prison. (Philip Marruffo/pmarruffo@svnmail.com)

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THOMSON – Long ignored in the fierce politicking over Illinois prisons, some residents of this village of 550 say they welcome a proposal to house federal prisoners, including terrorism suspects from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in this mostly vacant state prison.

Andrea McGinnis lives about one-half mile from the Thomson Correctional Center and manages Schafer’s Fisheries in Fulton, about 4 miles south of this Mississippi River town.

“I never liked the idea [of building it], but if it’s sitting there, I’d rather have people in it,” McGinnis, 37, said from behind a display case full of smoked catfish and sturgeon. “The community really could use it.”

Unemployment in Carroll County recently topped 11 percent, and previous plans to fill the 1,600 cells in this 8-year-old maximum-security prison sparked an economic buzz that eventually petered out every time, leaving residents wondering why.

Senior officials from the Obama administration were to visit Thomson today to determine whether the federal Bureau of Prisons will buy the state-of-the-art prison, which cost about $143 million to build and nearly $2 million a year to run, even with the fewer than 200 inmates now housed there.

Brad Spencer, 39, of Savanna, also works at the fishery. He said the repeated false starts from the Illinois Department of Corrections have left Thomson’s citizens cynical about the prison’s opening.

“They either need to open it or bulldoze it altogether and dump the remains in Springfield and let them deal with it,” Spencer said. “I don’t care if they bring terrorists here, ... but it won’t fly with everybody.”

A promise earlier this year from the Illinois Department of Corrections to open the prison at half-capacity was enough to persuade Zendel Zendeli, 41, to buy the Sunrise Restaurant on state Route 84.

The plan never materialized.

“Business is OK, but we all know it could be better,” Zendeli said. “We need the prison open.”

Zendeli doesn’t care whether the guards have IDOC or BOP badges on their uniforms. He just wants to sell them lunch.

“Prisoners are prisoners, as far as I’m concerned,” he said.

Like Spencer, Zendeli is jaded by IDOC’s track record in Thomson.

At the end of last year, the state prison authority started hiring guards; word of Pontiac prison’s imminent closure hit newsstands, and residents again believed the prison would open.

Then Gov. Pat Quinn kept Pontiac open, and the trained guards were shipped across the state, Zendeli said.

“As soon as I signed the papers, they turned around and changed their minds,” he said.

Thomson was one of several prisons evaluated by the Bureau of Prisons and has emerged as a leading contender to house Gitmo detainees, an anonymous Whites House official told The Associated Press on Saturday.

If the feds buy the prison, it would be run primarily as a penitentiary, but a portion would be leased to the Defense Department to house a limited number of Guantanamo detainees, the AP reported.

State Sen. Tim Bivins, R-Dixon, said federal officials have been scouting Thomson since at least early October, when he started to hear rumors of visits from Washington, D.C.

“But there was never anything specific,” Bivins said. “I’m open to the possibility of selling the prison, ... but I have deep concerns about bringing terror suspects to the United States.”

The General Assembly also should consider the state’s ongoing budget woes if the state Legislature weighs in, Bivins said.

“It’s just a waste,” Bivins said of the vacant prison. “If we can’t afford to run it, and there’s no intention to open it, we ought to do something with it.”

Illinois’ Dick Durbin, the U.S. Senate’s second-highest-ranking Democrat, supports the plan.

The prison would house fewer than 100 Gitmo detainees and would have a “significant positive impact on the local economy.” He estimates it would generate more than 3,000 jobs.

Carroll County Sheriff Jeff Doran said he, too, welcomes the proposal, because local law enforcement would be easier than if the prison were opened as a state facility.

Law enforcement difficulties common to prison towns, such as inmate visits and added strain on the county court system, would be less likely with a federal prison, Doran said.

“It’s going to be less of an issue than if it were a state prison,” he said.

At the Sunrise Restaurant, Maggie Rice said the prison has held the promise of jobs for a generation of Carroll County residents struggling to find work.

The 20-year-old food server said she was fortunate she got this job.

Whether that promise will ever materialize is something about which Rice, like many others, remains skeptical.

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” she said.