MONTGOMERY, Ala. – The Alabama Department of Corrections has “reasonable concern” that the construction of the Governor Kay Ivey Correctional Complex in Elmore County might not be completed by its deadline.
Lawmakers expected the 4,000-bed Elmore Specialized Men’s Facility now named after Alabama’s longest continuously serving governor to be finished by Oct. 15. That deadline was already five months later than initial estimates.
The facility is being constructed under a design-build agreement between the Alabama Corrections Institution Finance Authority and Caddell Construction Co. (DE), LLC. The authority contracted Hoar Program Management to oversee the project.
The sprawling multi-building prison campus will allow guards to monitor inmates from centralized hubs and will have two-man cells rather than dorms housing hundreds of men. It sits on around 300 acres of state-owned land.
The ADOC told Alabama Daily News that another delay for the more than $1 billion facility’s opening might be necessary.
“Under the guidance of HPM, the construction Schedule is closely monitored and there are indications that create a reasonable concern that the contractual Final Completion Date of October 15, 2026, may not be timely achieved by Caddell,” the ADOC said in a statement.
ADOC did not provide any specifics about the issues threatening to delay completion.
In light of the “indications,” the prison finance authority has “implemented contractual remedies” like requiring Caddell to hire additional workers and withholding payment, the department said.
Despite ADOC’s statement, Sen. Greg Albritton, R-Range, who serves on prison finance authority, said he thinks those contractural “remedies” could spur completion of the project to make the Oct. 15 deadline.
“We’ll see if that occurs because you know the costs on this are going to be on the vendor, not on the state,” Albritton said. “We’ve given authority to hire and do other things, but that’s going to come out of their money, their obligation. If they don’t meet this, it will be very costly to them, so I’m still optimistic that they’re going to make this work simply because they’re on the hook.”
Financing and delays
The state had tried for years to address overcrowding in Alabama’s dilapidated prisons by building new facilities. Finally, after multiple false starts, lawmakers and Ivey in 2021 passed legislation authorizing $1.2 billion for this and another 4,000-bed prison in Escambia County.
The 2021 legislation included borrowing up to $785 million for the two facilities and the use of $400 million in American Rescue Act Plan funds.
In 2022, the authority hoped to sell $725 million in bonds, but was only able to sell $509 million, leaving $276 million that it could still issue. By early 2024, the cost of the first prison in Elmore had ballooned to more than $1 billion, leaving officials searching for more funds for the Escambia site.
Alabama Daily News toured the construction site in 2024 offering readers an exclusive look at the progress. Leaders at the time described it like building a small town from scratch, with an 800 gallon water tower, a hub for mental health care, another hub for career and technical education and, of course, secured confinement for more than 4,000 individuals.
Albritton said that the state has completely financed its part in the Elmore prison. Similar to the first five-month delay, the construction company will be responsible for any additional costs, he said.
“Now we’ve finished this as far as what the state’s put in,” he said. “We put in our share. We’re not going to put another dime in that. So we put $1.1 or 1.2 billion into this new building, and in addition to that, we have not borrowed another single cent, and we have $650 million cash on hand for Escambia.”
He called the state’s “sound” financial position “pure magic,” attributing it to the state carefully managing money and being proactive. Albritton said that though several parties have made errors throughout the process, “we’re in better shape than we’ve ever been.”
“This (delay) was not (from) errors made significantly by the state,” Albritton said. “We made errors because we hadn’t built a prison in more than 50 years. A learning curve was there, but the real problem happened elsewhere. I’m not going to lay the blame anywhere, but we did our job. We got them financed, we kept good tabs on them, we kept good oversights on them, and now we’re getting this thing finished.”