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SALT LAKE CITY — A legislative panel wants to find land for a new state prison by the time lawmakers meet in general session next January.
And a consultant told the newly formed Prison Relocation Commission the state could begin construction in 2018 and open the facility in 2021.
Sen. Jerry Stevenson, who expressed frustration that the last committee studying the issue plowed the same ground as the first, said the decision to build a new prison is made and it's time to move forward.
"That's what we need to work on now, the right spot," the Layton Republican and commission co-chairman said at the panel's first meeting Thursday.
Stevenson sponsored the bill that created the relocation commission, composed of five Republican and two Democratic legislators, prison chief Rollin Cook and Ron Gordon, executive director of the Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice. It replaced the second of two Prison Relocation and Development authorities going back three years.
Lawmakers also earlier this year passed a resolution supporting the relocation of the aging prison from Point of the Mountain in Draper.
A new site has not been publicly identified, though the chairman of the previous authority said landowners in Salt Lake and Utah counties had come forward. Tooele County has also been mentioned as a possible location.
Officials say a new prison must be near medical facilities and courts as well as accessible to workers, volunteers and inmates' families.
"This is a very high-profile issue, one of the biggest the state will deal with over the next few years," said Rep. Brad Wilson, R-Kaysville, commission co-chairman. He said he wants the commission to come up with a preferred site or sites for the 2015 Legislature to consider.
MGT of America, a Texas-based consulting firm, presented the new panel results of a prison relocation study commissioned by the previous authority. Consultant George Camp compared the prison project to building a new school campus or business park and said it's likely more controversial and time-consuming.
"We feel that community interest and community support is fundamental to a new site," he said.
Camp outlined options for building a new prison as soon as 2018 and phasing out the Draper site by 2020 or 2024. Each option costs at least $1 billion.
Expanding the prison system, which houses inmates in Draper, Gunnison and 22 county jails, to accommodate protected growth would cost $783 million over 20 years, he said.
There were 7,605 prison inmates statewide last year, including 4,000 in what officials say are crumbling and outdated buildings in Draper. MGT estimated the population would reach 9,900 by 2033.
The consultants also found that the annual economic benefit of redeveloping the 600-acre prison property would be $1.8 billion, with state and local taxes adding up to $95 million each year.
