SALT LAKE CITY — A much-anticipated look Thursday at the four sites under consideration to replace the Utah State Prison in Draper appears to point to property in Eagle Mountain as the cheapest and easiest to develop.

"It does make me nervous," said Rep. David Lifferth, R-Eagle Mountain, after hearing the new technical analysis by state consultants that put the price of developing the Utah County site between $62 million and $76 million.

In contrast, the cost of utilities, roads and ground preparation at the Salt Lake City site, located west of Salt Lake City International Airport, would be the most expensive, estimated between $97 million and $132 million.

The cost of developing the other sites on the Legislature's Prison Relocation Commission's shortlist for the 4,000-bed facility, Grantsville in Tooele County and Fairfield in Utah County, are as low as $73 million and as high as $114.5 million.

No action was taken by the commission on the findings from Texas-based MGT of America, which did not rank the sites and did not include the cost of acquiring the hundreds of acres needed for the $550 million project.

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Commission members voted as expected to extend their deadline for recommending one of the sites to the Legislature from Aug. 1 to Oct. 1. Their pick will go before lawmakers, likely in a special session before the end of the year.

None of the communities being considered want the project.

Stephanie Gricius, a founder of the group opposed to moving the prison from Point of the Mountain, Keep It In Draper, and a candidate for the Eagle Mountain City Council, said she believes the final decision won't be based on the numbers.

"This is a political decision and they'll put it where they think they can get away with it," Gricius said. "Where they feel is safest, is in Salt Lake. That's the least amount of constituents" affected.

Lynn Pace, a senior adviser to Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker, isn't so sure she's wrong.

"I think that Salt Lake City has always been one of the favorite sites," Pace said. "It's simply because of its proximity. It makes it an attractive site because it's close."

In June, Rep. Jake Anderegg, R-Lehi, said the "political will" of the Legislature is to move the prison to the Salt Lake site, based on his own informal survey of fellow lawmakers.

What makes the site the most expensive to develop is that the soil is so spongy it must be squeezed dry by piling on a heavy fill material, a process that will take 18 months.

Related:

New study updates economic impact of Draper prison move

A new look at the economic impact of moving the Utah State Prison from Draper found that developing the site could generate between $557 million and some $2.7 billion, depending on what's built there.

The cost of stabilizing the site, which has an "abundance of wetlands" and also must be raised several feet above flood level, would be $60 million or more, the consultant said.

Pace said while the city continues to maintain that and other issues make it a bad site to build a major facility like a state prison, it's not clear how the commission will weigh proximity versus cost.

A study on transportation costs associated with the new sites by legislative staff also presented at the commission's meeting estimated that the most employees and volunteers, 51 percent, live within 25 miles of the Salt Lake City site.

Lifferth said the Salt Lake site is the best deal for taxpayers because it will be cheaper to operate in the long run thanks to being closer to employees and volunteers as well as courts and hospitals.

He said the decision shouldn't be based on which site is "the cheapest one to get into today" and suggested the lower housing costs in Eagle Mountain are being used against the community.

Eagle Mountain Mayor Chris Pengra said he disagrees with the cost estimates.

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"They're taking some shortcuts," the mayor said, including downplaying the amount of additional traffic that would have to be accommodated on the already crowded roads through the residential community.

Pengra said he isn't going to suggest another of the proposed sites would be a better fit for the prison.

"I'm not going to play that game," he said. Instead, Pengra said he continues to oppose moving the prison because it amounts to a "socializing the costs and privatizing the profits" of developing the nearly 700-acre Draper site.

The other two sites under consideration, near the Wal-Mart distribution center in Grantsville and near Eagle Mountain in tiny Fairfield, raised concerns because of costs associated with utilities as well as issues unique to each site.

In Grantsville, the site slopes some 700 feet and would have to be leveled at a cost of up to $34 million, the report said. In Fairfield, the concern is over the impact on the area's historic resources, including Camp Floyd/Stagecoach Inn State Park.

"There's a lot of numbers we still need. We have to look at a wide range of issues," the commission's co-chairman, House Majority Assistant Whip Brad Wilson, R-Kaysville, said. "There's more to consider here than just the numbers."

The commission's other co-chairman, Sen. Jerry Stevenson, R-Layton, said members also have to "put together a value to the taxpayer of the state of Utah over a long period of time and that may not be equal to the cost today."

Additional information is being sought by the commission in a number of areas, including long-term utility costs. The price of each property is still being negotiated, Wilson said.

The commission also received a report on building a new prison at the current Draper site rather than freeing up the property located along Utah's high-tech corridor dubbed "Silicon Slopes."

As the consultants have previously said, the report shows there isn't enough undeveloped land on the nearly 700-acre site to build there, and building in phases would add to the cost and raise security issues.

But Stevenson acknowledged the findings, sought because of pressure from opponents of the prison move to keep the facility in Draper, likely won't satisfy the critics.

"This issue will not be to rest until we have a new facility and the old one is torn down," the senator said.

There are no plans to hold a second public hearing on the prison relocation, but Wilson said public comments can be made online via the commission's website.

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