POINT PLEASANT, W.Va. -- More than 100 people packed the third floor courtroom of the Mason County Courthouse on Thursday night to voice their objections to plans by state Corrections officials to transfer inmates from the all-female Lakin Correctional Center to the soon-to-be-closed Naval Information Operations Center in Sugar Grove, and convert Lakin into a prison for male offenders.
But that proved unnecessary, after Senate Finance Chairman Mike Hall, R-Putnam, announced early in the meeting that the battle over Lakin's inmates' gender had apparently already been won.
Following a telephone conversation with Tomblin on Tuesday, "I have a clear indication from the governor that it's not going to happen," Hall said of the proposed inmate population switch. "He said to tell the people here that everything will be all right and that the whole thing will be over by next week."
To meet a deadline set by the General Services Administration, the agency in charge of disposing of surplus federal property, Tomblin must decide by Sept. 4 whether to accept transfer of the Pendleton County Navy base to state ownership and, presumably, declare its intended reuse role.
A good working relationship has been established between Mason County residents and inmates at the Lakin Center that needs to be kept intact, said County Commissioner Rick Handley. "Those ladies have painted my church and picked trash off our roads," he said, in addition to training companion dogs for returning veterans.
State Corrections Commissioner Jim Rubenstein, who spoke after Hall at Thursday's meeting, said he had no first-hand knowledge of the governor's plans for a new role for the base, scheduled to close by Sept. 30. While it would cost less to convert the base to a women's prison, it could be used to house male inmates instead, he said.
Since Mason County political leaders and the public were told before the institution was built that Lakin would always be a prison for women, "I understand your position as well as your frustration and anger," Rubenstein said. "I know the governor has heard your voices and knows of the good things going on at Lakin now. ...I applaud Mason County for embracing that facility right off the bat and letting us build something here that had been needed for a long time -- a prison just for women." Operating a co-ed facility, as Corrections did at Pruntytown Correctional Center from 1988 to 2007, "is just not good," Rubenstein said.
While the state's prisoner population has reached 7,000 and is expected to stabilize at about 7,400, women account for the fastest growing inmate demographic, according to Rubenstein. A total of 545 female inmates are now housed at Lakin, while another 200 are being held in regional jails until space becomes available at the Mason County facility, he said.
Hall said he favored a plan in which Kansas-based KVC Health Systems, one of the nation's oldest foster care case management services, would convert the former Navy base into Sugar Grove College, a specialized career college for youth aging out of the foster care system.
While the GSA chose the Corrections plan for reusing the base over KVC's earlier this year, KVC "still has an active proposal," said Hall, who told those attending the meeting that he once applied to be KVC's state director for West Virginia.
"I know these people very well,"Hall said. "They were the first suitor for this project. At one point, they were very close to having a deal worked out with the community college system."
The base, which in recent years has employed more than 300 military and civilian workers with about 200 dependents, is the county's second-largest employer and provided fire and ambulance coverage for much of the southern portion of Pendleton County. The Lakin Correctional Center has about 125 employees.
Construction on the Navy base began in 1955 after land was acquired through an agreement with the U.S. Forest Service, which continues to manage adjacent tracts. Initially, the site was used by the Naval Research Laboratory to construct the 60-foot prototype for a 600-foot-diameter parabolic antenna that became obsolete before it was built. After abandoning that project in 1962, the Navy opted to build a radio communications operation on the property, and use the 60-foot dish and a new 150-foot antenna, as receivers, according to an official history of the base. A pair of circular, 1,000-foot-diamter arrays were added, and later removed, as technology changed.
From 1969 to 1992, the base was named Naval Radio Station Sugar Grove, and its role involved "gathering communications from Navy planes, ships and stations from around the world," according to the history. In 1974, the base was awarded a Meritorious Unit Commendation for outstanding support of the national intelligence effort. Two years later, the operations center for the 60-foot antenna was moved into a new Naval Security Group building. By 1992, the Naval Radio Station at Sugar Grove was officially closed, after its operations were merged with those at another station, and the base became a Naval Security Group Activity. Due to increased automation, the base ended its status as a Naval Security Group site in 2005, and became a unit of the Navy Information Operations Command, ending its "cryptologic element responsibilies."
The Sugar Grove base is divided into two components: the 117-acre main base being closed by the Navy, which contains virtually all housing, administrative offices, maintenance shops and recreational facilities, and an even more remote 477-acre operations area found six miles to the south at a higher elevation, that includes a 60,000 square foot, two story underground bunker where signals intelligence work was, and apparently is, being performed.
According to previous announcements by the Navy, the operations area is not being sold and will continue to be operated by the National Security Agency, the base's "resource sponsor."
Reach Rich Steelhammer at rsteelhammer@wvgazette.com, 304-348-5169 or follow @rsteelhammer on Twitter.