And at a news conference May 30, county officials plan to announce an effort to relocate the severely crowded Camden County Jail in downtown Camden.
"We owe it to our community to eliminate jails from downtown Camden City and to place them in areas where they are not anywhere close to residential communities," Freeholder Director Louis Cappelli said yesterday. "I think by eliminating jails, we are opening up Camden for business and for more economic development."
The plans in the nation's poorest city are in their infancy and will likely take years. It is still unclear where either facility might be relocated, how long it would take, how much it would cost and who would pay for it.
Corzine spokesman Brendan Gilfillan said the administration's study of the state prison should be completed "in the next couple of months."
"The governor has said and still believes that Riverfront State Prison is on prime real estate and he believes that that real estate could be better used to revitalize the city," Gilfillan said.
The 1,000-inmate Riverfront State Prison sits on 13 acres just north of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge. It was built after Camden officials agreed to a 1981 deal that let the state build the prison in exchange for millions of dollars in aid to close a municipal budget gap.
City leaders have regretted that deal ever since, and in 2003 the Delaware River Port Authority's vice chairman, Jeffrey Nash, launched an effort to move the prison off the waterfront.
A DRPA-funded study released last year found that if the prison were razed, a developer could turn the area north of the bridge into a residential and retail complex. The prison site could accommodate between 500 and 800 condos, according to the study.
Officials familiar with the talks mentioned Cumberland County, home to other state prisons, as one possibility to relocate Riverfront. And they said county officials were looking into the possibility of a regional facility to house their own prisoners.
