THE ‘SELL’ BLOCK

Upstate prison can be yours for 390G

ALBANY — Looking for a Big House?

There’s one for sale in upstate Madison County.

The state plans to put the former Camp Georgetown minimumsecurity prison on the auction block on Sept. 11 with bids starting at $390,000.

And the amenities are fit for . . . a prisoner.

The lucky buyer will wind up with 31 acres, 38 buildings, an onsite waterdistribution system, a 150,000gallon elevated water tank, underground sewer piping, a per mitted wastewatertreatment plant, and 10 petroleum bulk storage tanks — all nestled amid 98,000 acres of stateforest land.

Two gyms, 75 bathrooms, three dormitories, a mess hall and a chapel sweeten the deal.

Camp Georgetown could be the perfect hideaway for sportsmen, surrounded by forests open to hunting, trapping and fishing.

But former prisons can be a hard sell; when the state tried to auction Camp Gabriels in the Adirondacks in 2010, it got no takers, and the property still hasn’t been unloaded.

The auctions are part of the downsizing of the state prison system following a dwindling of the inmate population.

The state sold two prisonadministrator houses in June near New York’s oldest penitentiary, in Auburn.

Georgetown, opened in 1961, is one of seven prisons the state closed last year. They include Fulton Correctional Facility, a workrelease prison in The Bronx, and the mediumsecurity Arthur Kill Correctional Facility on Staten Island, which remains vacant and, according to some Staten Islanders, an eyesore.

Gabriels was one of three prisons closed under thenGov. David Paterson, who also shut dozens of housing units within undercapacity prisons and mothballed half a dozen annexes that had been built when the crack epidemic of the 1980s led to a major expansion of the prison system.

Gov. Cuomo has said that last year’s closures cut 3,800 beds and will save state taxpayers $184 million over the next two years.

Camp Georgetown, about 35 miles from Syracuse, cost the state $6.5 million to operate annually but was operating at a little more than a third of its capacity with 100 inmates before it closed.

State officials are also hoping to turn other prison assets into cold cash, including the sale of housing once built for superintendents and other prison officials around the state.

Lawmakers and prisonguard union leaders have criticized the state for offering the stateowned housing at cutrate rents to highly paid administrators, calling the arrangements unnecessary relics from a time when wardens had to be on or close to the prisons.