GROUNDBREAKING HELD FOR TAMMS PRISON

TAMMS, Ill. -- Illinois Gov. Jim Edgar told a crowd of about 300 Wednesday that he had been to a lot of groundbreaking ceremonies since he was elected, but never did he attend one with so many shovels.

Edgar and several state and local dignitaries stood before a row of 40 shovels adorned with bright red bows, delivering words of inspiration to Southern Illinois residents on the eve of construction of the first phase of the Tamms Correctional Center.

"I thought this was supposed to be symbolic," Edgar said. "We could dig the entire project with all these shovels."

Tamms was selected last year to be home to a $60 million, super-maximum prison, which will employ up to 250 people during construction.

When completed, the facility will employ up to 300 and provide an $11-million-per-year payroll. The prison is scheduled to open in the fall of 1996.

But construction of the prison will come after the completion of the Tamms Work Camp, which will commence today with meetings between prison designers and local contractors.

A water line has already been run to the site, with sewer lines close behind.

The minimum security work camp will be operated as a satellite facility of the Tamms Correctional Center.

The total cost of the work camp is approximately $7.3 million. It is scheduled for completion in the spring of next year. Approximately 100 construction jobs will be created during the building of the camp, and 85 full-time employees are expected to be hired after its completion.

The mood was festive Wednesday afternoon during the ground breaking ceremony at the site of the work camp, just west of Tamms.

"This is a great day for southernmost Illinois, and the people of the counties that supported this prison," said Jerry Reppert, chairman of the multi-county committee that coordinated the proposal to the state. "We have waited a long time -- some a lifetime -- for this to come."

Edgar echoed Reppert's assessment of the need for such a facility in the area.

"Breaking ground here today marks the beginning of the state's promise to provide jobs in Alexander County," the governor said.

The camp will be comprised of four buildings totaling approximately 54,000 square feet. The buildings will include a residential unit housing 200, a multi-purpose building with recreation, commissary and classroom space, an office building and a facility for storage and vehicle maintenance.

Illinois State Sen. Jim Rea, D-Christopher, one of the driving forces behind Tamms' selection as the site for the prison complex, was on hand Wednesday to see his work reach fruition.

"One of the things the state was looking for when selecting a site was community support of the project," said Rea. "To say that this community supported the idea would be an understatement."

Rea said had mixed feelings about the prison. On the one hand, the induction of the prison would provide economic stimulation to an area of extreme unemployment. But then again, Rea said, you don't like to see prisons having to be built anywhere.

"But I must admit that this kind of prison is badly needed in the state," said Rea. "Now if an inmate doesn't like the maximum security prison he's staying in, all he has to do is to injure a guard. That will get him transferred to another maximum-security prison.

"But with the construction of the super-max, if a prisoner demonstrates an inability to live with other inmates, he will be brought here where he will be locked in a cell 23 hours a day," said Rea. "And the inmates at the work camp next door will be able to do a lot of the things that prisoners in other prisons do for themselves like laundry, cleaning and food preparation."