Fayette County Prison has long lived out its usefulness
It is old enough for the history books. The Fayette County Prison long ago reached landmark status eligibility.
The year it opened Grover Cleveland was president.
Well, he was president until the forgettable Benjamin Harrison recited the oath of office on March 4, 1889.
That same year of 1889 settlers mounted their ponies in their eagerness to stake out property in Oklahoma Territory (Oklahoma became a state in 1907; at 18, the county lockup was then still relatively new).
That same year was also the first, and worst, Johnstown Flood, which claimed over 2,000 lives and implicated those two living, breathing specimens of ostentatious wealth, H.C. Frick and Andrew Carnegie.
In 1889, Jefferson Davis died and Adolph Hitler was born.
It was the year of the first college football game, the first American golf course, and the first time stars were sown on the flag representing the new states of North Dakota, Montana and Washington.
In Paris, the Eiffel Tower hoisted its first visitors 986 feet, to the roof top of the man-made wonder, for a panoramic view of the city and the French countryside.
Did you know the Eiffel Tower was originally slated for demolition? It survived, however, withstanding World War I, World War II and the Nazi occupation, the Cold War, and, so far, the age of terrorist madness and mayhem.
The year of its demise was to have been 1909. Heck, the Fayette County jail was just a pup then.
Maybe the prison should have come with an expiration date. We would have then been spared the silly debate as to whether the jail has been in service too long.
Listen, I’m not making a judgment on the price for a new prison. $30 million? I’m not as familiar with the specifications as some others are, and still more others purport to be, to render an opinion.
And I’m not sure about the placement of a new jail in Dunbar Township. It may be a good location; it may not be.
This is what I do know: after 126 years the current prison should be mothballed, and the space it occupies converted to other uses. A restaurant maybe, a museum, more office space for county business?
The list, while not infinite, could be long enough to generate a public debate sufficiently heated to satisfy even the most fevered minds.
The rigmarole over the jail has been a little like the rumpus over the Keystone XL Pipeline: a hyper-charged swirl of words. There’s been way too much hyperbole.
In fact, any individual who refers to the planned-but-now-scuttled prison as a “Taj Mahal” should pay the price for cliche mongering on a huge scale and for thinking way too deep inside the box.
Such people lack the two most basic skills for worthwhile public service: common sense wedded to a creative imagination.
Which brings up another prison-related matter, emanating from city officials, that Uniontown requires a jail presumably as an anchor for its downtown.
County Commissioners Vincent Zapotosky and Angela Zimmerlink, quoted in this newspaper, have spoken of creating a “campus-style” facility as part of the prison renovation they envision.
A “campus-like” facility? With barbed wire?
That or any design for a prison is no way to recharge downtown. No public problem this side of income inequality is harder of solution than what to do with traditional downtowns.
Many have tried, few have succeeded in reversing the decline of most small-city downtowns that occurred with the spread, first, of malls and later of strip malls and stand-alone anchor stores.
It defies reason to think that refurbishing the county jail (and employing the long-abandoned and grossly deteriorated city jail in the process) offers a way forward for the city.
Rapid, citywide Internet connectivity, maybe; free parking, maybe; a downtown design for a national retail super store, maybe.
A “campus-like” county jail, no. Definitely, no.
It’s time both Uniontown and Fayette County turn the page. It’s time both embraced the 21st century.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown and is the author of two books: Grand Salute: Stories of the World War II Generation and Our People. He can be reached at grandsalutebook@gmail.com.