Investors consider uses for facility
Potential buyers tour former Mount McGregor prison site
Bright sun poured through tall southward facing windows in the old prison dining hall atop Mount McGregor on Friday, similar to what one might at expect at a world-class resort.
The expansive view, to the northern Catskills more than 70 miles away, inspired some about the site’s possibilities. Others say the cost, perhaps $40 million, needed to rehabilitate aging buildings and infrastructure is a barrier too great to overcome.
More than a half-dozen interested parties toured former Mount McGregor Correctional Facility, which the state is trying to sell for economic development purposes.
“I think it’s fantastic,” said Mark Adams, an MIT graduate and chief executive officer of Saratoga Springs-based Global Energy Research Association. “Our company is all about energy innovation. You need space to try things out. There’s more than enough here.”
Adams envisions the campus and surrounding 325-acre property as an energy research park.
Proposals are due March 31. The state hasn’t listed a set price. Perhaps more important is a buyer’s plans for the property and ability to create jobs.
At its peak, the prison employed more than 300 people.
William J. Browning, of Florida-based Browning Productions & Entertainment, could hardly contain his enthusiasm about potential uses including a combination film studio, virtual reality theme park and concert venue. His grandfather, Ricou Browning, produced the popular 1960s television series, “Flipper;” directed underwater scenes for James Bond movies; and played the Gill-man in the 1954 “Creature from the Black Lagoon.”
“We have a prison in Florida, in the Everglades, that we’re about to purchase, too,” Browning said. “It’s the polar opposite of this place. The diversity is good because what works here is different from what works down there.”
Browning’s firm produces the television series, “Training Grounds.”
“I like this property because it has more building square footage (500,000),” he said. “The one in Florida has more land. So I can do tactical driving courses down there. Up here I can do more augmented reality in the buildings. I’m ready to do it now. The only thing I would wait on is the state. The question is, how fast can they approve this process so we can get started and make this happen?”
Friday’s tour started with the Administration Building and included inmate housing and the historic chapel, which includes a vintage 1917 organ.
The site started out in 1913 as a sanatorium for Metropolitan Life Insurance Company employees suffering from tuberculosis. The setting was chosen to help people cure in the fresh mountain air.
The sanatorium was used until 1945, when the state took it over as a place for military veterans to heal from the physical and emotional wounds of World War II. In the early 1960s, the site became a facility for the developmentally disabled before being converted to a minimum-security prison that opened in 1976. A medium-security prison followed in fall 1986.
The access road to Mount McGregor is shared by visitors to Grant State Historic Site, which sits right outside the former prison’s razor-topped fence. It was here that President and Civil War General Ulysses S. Grant penned his memoirs shortly before passing on July 23, 1885.
“We’re very concerned about Grant Cottage,” said Jeffrey D. Cleary, of state Sen. Kathleen Marchione’s office. “They need services like electricity and water.”
Marchione wants to make sure that whatever happens to the former prison doesn’t negatively impact the historic site, he said.
Peter Cornell, president and chief executive officer of Rochester-based Pike Development Co., with offices in Clifton Park, said the property’s financial drawbacks are too great to consider investing in it. His firm specializes in projects such as hospitals, higher education and senior and assisted living. There are more than various-sized 100 buildings at Mount McGregor.
“Just the size, to repurpose it, puts it in a totally different category,” Cornell said. “The investment required to work with a facility like this is beyond what you’re get a reasonable return on. The $8 million the state wants to contribute doesn’t scratch the surface. I think you’d need $30 million to $40 million from the state and federal governments, in grants and incentives, before anyone would touch this.”
Ryan Van Amburgh, of Saratoga Economic Development Corp., said he’s previously shown Mount McGregor to other parties including a defense contractor, which was attracted to its remote secure setting.
“It’s generated a lot of interest because everyone wants to see it turned into something,” he said. “It comes back to the dollar amount and what the state is willing to pitch in.”