DWIGHT, Ill. — Nature has taken over the vacated Dwight Correctional Center, where a thin forest of spindly trees covers a 160-acre campus that old photos show once featured well-tended lawns and stately oaks.
The decaying old prison has become an unauthorized soundstage for YouTubers. In a video titled “We Got Trapped Inside an Abandoned Prison by Police,” a user whose profile promises “crazy abandoned explorations!” describes wandering the off-limits site for hours before encountering a police officer.
“After spending hours here and not seeing anyone but us, we realized we weren’t here by ourselves. Someone was watching and listening,” a narrator says over foreboding music.
On a recent visit, the scene at the prison that closed more than 10 years ago and has been largely left to deteriorate was more mundane. The prison’s buildings sit on a rural patch just off Interstate 55, abutting farm fields, a small cemetery and the west fork of the Mazon River, just west of the town of about 4,000 inhabitants.
If the General Assembly approves a key element of Gov. JB Pritzker’s budget proposal this spring, it could breathe life back into the sprawling, overgrown site and four other unused state properties like it that have become targets for vandalism and worse.
In a budget proposal that included no new taxes and cuts to key programs like health care for noncitizen immigrants, Pritzker is proposing the state invest $300 million to prepare the sites for private development. Funding would come from the state’s capital budget.
The Pritzker administration said the program would create jobs and support community revitalization, and the project would attract new businesses, potentially leading to billions of dollars in private investment. The five sites in the proposal were identified as “high priority,” though others might be considered in the future.
“There’s no reason for the state to continue to own that facility. Let’s see if there’s a private owner that would take that over, that we could sell that facility to. So maybe it takes a little bit of money,” Pritzker said Thursday during an unrelated news conference in Champaign. “Nobody wants to buy an old prison, for example, to use for something. And so sometimes you have to tear down what’s on the property to make it of any value to a future owner and so we’re looking at all that.”
In addition to the Dwight prison, the proposal includes the site of the shuttered Jacksonville Developmental Center, which consists of 18 buildings on 100 acres, and the abandoned Lincoln Developmental Center about 60 miles away in Lincoln, which has 27 buildings and sits on another 100 acres. The two other chosen sites are the shuttered 100-acre, 12-building H. Douglas Singer Mental Health Center in Rockford, and a 70-acre section of unutilized land outside the Shapiro Developmental Center in Kankakee.
The Jacksonville, Rockford and Dwight facilities were all closed by Gov. Pat Quinn’s administration in the early 2010s amid financial struggles.
For Dwight, like other towns with large state facilities, the prison was a major part of the local economy, bringing in workers and visitors. The town has also had its share of other economic hardships over the years, including the closure of a nearby printing plant in 2020.
Residents of the small towns near the sites would welcome state action.
“It’s just sat there as an eyesore, empty, not doing anything,” Doug Patten of the Dwight Economic Alliance said of the prison site.
The decision to shutter the prison in 2013, when women incarcerated there were transferred to Logan Correctional Center outside of Lincoln, “did affect everybody,” Patten said.
Residents’ suggestions for the site run the gamut. Some said they’d like to see subdivisions or a factory go up in order to get the property off taxpayers’ hands. Others, including Patten, said it would ideally be returned at least in part to farmland, though they acknowledged that would be an expensive undertaking.
Tino Flores, owner of Tio Tino’s Tacos in downtown Dwight, moved to town after the prison closed. If the site doesn’t quickly attract developers, he suggested it could be used for recreation in the interim, or as a market with stalls for small businesses.
At the Dwight Country Club about half a mile from the prison down a rural road, general manager Joe Bloxam said the site needs to be replaced with “anything that can stimulate the economy.”
“It’s obviously not doing anything now, it’s draining the economy,” Bloxam said. “Something needs to be put there.”
Dwight’s main street is lined with antique stores, a barbershop and bars advertising video slots. It faces an Amtrak station and the ornate white columns of Fox Developmental Center, another state-run facility that serves as a major local employer.
The prison itself is about 3 miles away, in an unincorporated area across the interstate. Even if the site does get “shovel-ready,” as the governor’s office has said it hopes it will, some in Dwight don’t think it’ll be easy to find a buyer.
“It’s a piece of property at that point. So what. … There’s property all over the place,” said Mark Boma, who with his wife ran the local newspaper for more than two decades.
But getting the site in shape for development to its “highest and best use” will be in taxpayers’ best interest, said Adam Dontz, CEO of the Greater Livingston County Economic Development Council. There can never be enough “sites that are ready for immediate development” in Illinois, he said.
Still, making a site ready for development does not mean it will immediately be developed. Dontz’s organization controls a parcel of land about 3 miles from the former Dwight prison that is zoned for heavy industrial use and has been on the market for about four years. The council recently tapped a real estate company to promote it.
Mark Denzler, president and CEO of the Illinois Manufacturers’ Association, said his organization supports the governor’s plan and noted the five sites have much of the necessary infrastructure for development, though he acknowledged that potential investors would want to see how the state’s remediation efforts shape up.
“I think every site is going to be different based on what development may go in. If it’s a manufacturing facility, if it’s (a) data center, if it’s housing, it all depends on what these developers are looking to do. But all these sites … already have power run to them, they have water, they have sewer(s), they’re close to interstates, which are all things that developers are looking for, and companies are looking for.”
Like the Dwight prison, other unused state properties have attracted trespassers and vandals over the years. Police were called to the Rockford site more than 20 times last year on issues including illicit fireworks, city records show. On March 2, more than two dozen firefighters and emergency personnel fought a structure fire on the heavily vandalized site, according to a city report.
“It’s literally a complete waste of resources and just a waste of a potential site,” Rockford Mayor Tom McNamara said.
The Illinois Department of Central Management Services, which is responsible for maintaining and securing surplus state properties said that in the fiscal year ending June 30 the state was projected to spend about $1.7 million across 10 CMS-controlled surplus properties, according to spokesperson Cynthia Johnson. The properties included all of those in Pritzker’s proposal except Kankakee.
The desolate fields and dilapidated buildings that were once the Jacksonville Developmental Center in west-central Illinois are a backdrop for passing motorists, dog walkers and children from an adjacent day care center.
Catrice James imagined the possibilities for the site as she walked Gracie, her Boston terrier mix, near the boarded-up buildings.
“There’s a lot of work here. They could put people in this community to work,” said James, who lives nearby. “You know, it just makes so much more sense to reclaim, repurpose and rebuild than it does to just let it rot.”
Residents and advocates of the town of a little over 17,000 have tried over the past decade to draw the attention of state officials to the land, a movement that grew in intensity after one of the buildings caught on fire last summer.
The history of state facilities for people with special needs or disabilities in Jacksonville goes back to the 1840s, when a school for the hearing impaired that is now the Illinois School for the Deaf was established. The Illinois School for the Visually Impaired was also started around that time. Both institutions still exist today.
“Those facilities, they’re old but that’s what we were known for. We were known for a community that embraced folks with disabilities, that we understood what they’re going through,” said Jacksonville Mayor Andy Ezard. “We make those individuals feel at ease.”
The developmental center was originally named the Illinois State Asylum and Hospital for the Insane after the General Assembly in 1847 passed legislation authorizing its creation, which was pushed by mental health advocate Dorothea Dix. Its first patient was admitted four years later.
Over the years, the facility’s duties expanded beyond caring for people with mental illness to treating people with developmental disabilities. The center closed in November 2012.
Since then, police have received about 100 calls to the site for reports of burglary, criminal trespassing, criminal damage to property and other issues, according to local police records. About 10 fires have broken out on or around the site since 2017, including the one in August that was deemed arson.
On that day, the South Jacksonville Fire Department addressed a Facebook post to Pritzker urging action on the site’s abandoned buildings “before someone gets hurt.”
“Windows get busted. Folks get in there and get as much scrap and stuff out of the building. That’s just how it is nowadays,” Ezard explained, also saying the buildings have been used by homeless people. “People are struggling out there.”
Anthony Lancaster works at a day care center abutting the site, and said staff is often concerned about the children’s safety when people are seen wandering around the property.
“Anything’s better than these abandoned buildings because we see less-than-desirable types going in there,” Lancaster said.
State Sen. Steve McClure, a Republican from Springfield whose district used to cover the area of the developmental center, said he’s mentioned the site to Pritzker before and has worked with Democratic senators to try to make it easier for the state to sell the properties.
“Private business just can’t take it over because if they do, it’s going to cost them $19-$20 million just to remediate just the environmental issues. And so, it’s the state’s responsibility to take care of these properties,” McClure said. “But nobody wants to buy them because of the fact that they have such issues with getting them just to be usable for their purposes.”
A community survey of nearly 500 respondents released in January showed a desire to maintain green space on the JDC grounds, as well as to promote development for “mixed use and commercial/retail use,” according to a news release from the city of Jacksonville. Respondents also emphasized the need for family-friendly activities, and most said they “do not wish the space to be used for low-income housing,” the release said.
“Just leaving them empty to rot like this, that’s a shame. That’s bad (for) the environment,” said James, the dog walker.
Pritzker’s plan has also raised hopes among residents in Lincoln, a town about 30 miles northeast of Springfield and the site of the former Lincoln Developmental Center.
Before it was shuttered in 2002 by Gov. George Ryan, who cited unsafe conditions for residents, the facility served about 380 residents and had about 660 employees. But since then, taxpayer money has paid for basic maintenance and security at the facility, said Lincoln Mayor Tracy Welch.
“This property has sat vacant and has slowly deteriorated before our eyes,” Welch said two days after Pritzker’s budget address, standing across the street from the site. “This has no economic value for our community in its current condition.”
“When you come into Lincoln from Springfield, it is what you see when you enter into the town,” said Andrea Runge, who heads Lincoln Economic Advancement and Development, known as LEAD. “And those blighted buildings, the covered windows, when you think about that and you think about that day in and out of the people who live here, I think it has an impact on us psychologically.”
Private development on the site would be seen as a victory for a town that in recent years has also lost factories and two colleges, Lincoln College and Lincoln Christian University. Another potential blow came with the Pritzker administration’s proposal to tear down the Logan Correctional Center, a women’s prison just outside of Lincoln, and rebuild it near Joliet.
State Rep. William Hauter, a Republican from Morton, said the plan to upgrade the developmental center site would be “a huge, huge thing for Lincoln.” He acknowledged that the plan might be a political bargaining chip in the plan to relocate the women’s prison. “It only makes sense that that is in some way playing into their thinking.”
“I’m grateful for that because we do need something,” he said. “And if they are going to take away Logan, which we’re going to fight, give us something.”
In Champaign, Pritzker denied the move to include the Lincoln Developmental Center property had anything to do with plans to relocate the women’s prison, but instead was based on “opportunity.”
“You could have housing development on any of these sites and we all know we need housing in the state of Illinois,” Pritzker said. “And so, some of these locations will be perfect for housing developments. But again, if we don’t put a little bit of money into fixing them up or tearing down what’s on the property we won’t ever get to have those results.”
A state-run juvenile justice facility is already being built on a portion of the developmental center’s property. Welch, the mayor, noted the economic potential for the site’s location since Lincoln is “strategically located for distribution” for various businesses considering it sits off I-55, the Union Pacific Railroad and other thoroughfares. Welch also said there’s different possibilities for the land, including a tiny home community for veterans.
In Dwight, feelings about the prison site’s prospects are tied up with uneasiness about the local economy. Back on the main street, Flo Hoy, who runs the Flo’s on Franklin antique shop, said she hopes the state is able to get the land off of taxpayers’ hands.
She recalled hearing stories about military bases closing in other places, “and then the town just kind of crumbles afterward.”
“I don’t think we’re completely crumbled, but I think we’re on the verge,” she said.
