By RYAN LANCASTER
Staff Reporter
The listing might read something like this: Secure estate nestled in quiet neighborhood near Medical Lake waterfront. Large manor contains hundreds of cozy rooms; bathrooms en suite. Owner forced to sell.
Seeking some much needed revenue the state is putting a number of surplus properties up for sale on the private market next month, including the former Pine Lodge Corrections Center for Women and adjacent acreage in Medical Lake.
The property is owned by the Department of Health and Social Services, which was leasing the 45 acre jail complex to the Department of Corrections before budget cuts led to its closure last spring.
According to information provided by the state's Department of General Administration, which is handling the sale, the property consists of four parcels totaling approximately 188 acres and has an assessed value of $6.3 million. This includes the jail complex, valued at $3.7 million, and other structures worth about $85,000 – all built in 1980.
State law requires surplus state property to be advertised to other public agencies before it is offered on the private market, but General Administration spokesman Steve Valandra said no agency expressed interest in Pine Lodge within the designated 15-day window, which ended April 4.
In May the state will contract a private broker to help ascertain a fair market value for the facility and get it sold along with 12 other properties around Washington, Valandra said. Other surplus properties to be listed include Maple Lane School, the shuttered juvenile detention facility near Centralia, and Francis Haddon Morgan Center, the residential habilitation center in Bremerton. The total assessed value of all properties is approximately $96.4 million.
Who might be interested in buying a former women's prison is unclear. Last year officials with DSHS said the facility would need retrofitting for any new purpose other than a maintenance/operations function. Since the prison closed some buildings have been used by Consolidated Support Services, the maintenance and operations arm of DSHS that supports Eastern State Hospital and Lakeland Village. Medical Lake was renting gym space from DSHS for use by the city's parks and recreation department, an arrangement they had hoped to extend but looks to be improbable with a sale on the horizon.
Last year the state suggested Spokane County look at Pine Lodge as a possible replacement for Geiger Corrections Center but county leaders quashed the idea, saying the cost of a remodel would outweigh any potential benefits of using the site.
Medical Lake City Councilman Howard Jorgenson raised the issue again last week during a discussion on the county's push for a new detention center on the West Plains. He was concerned that a private party could buy Pine Lodge and offer to rent the facility to the county.
“I would hope that if you get any wind of that you would share that with us before the fact and not after like the state did,” Jorgenson said to Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich.
Knezovich reiterated that the facility doesn't fit the county's needs, noting that at least one building is sub-standard and would have to be torn down and rebuilt to accommodate medium-security inmates.
“One of the questions that I continually get asked is, ‘why not Pine Lodge?'” Knezovich said. “Well, Pine Lodge didn't work. We came out, we looked at this and Pine Lodge did not work for the purposes that we need.”
Ryan Lancaster can be reached at ryan@cheneyfreepress.com.
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