The state has announced details of its plan to rebuild Stateville Correctional Center while adding a second women’s prison to the Crest Hill site.

The future facility will include a men’s prison with capacity for 1,500 beds and a women’s prison with capacity for 800 beds, according to a news release from the Illinois Department of Corrections.

“The men’s facility will also include infrastructure that would allow for additional housing units to be built, if IDOC were to decide in the future they were needed,” according to the release.

Old Stateville has been vacated, although the IDOC continues to operate its Northern Reception & Classification Center on the site. The center opened in 2004 and is located outside the walls of Stateville, which was built in 1925.

The state has 2,200 acres of land at the Stateville site.

IDOC plans to close its Logan Correctional Center, a women’s prison located in Lincoln, and move inmates to the new Crest Hill facility.

Gov. JB Pritzker in 2024 announced the plan to demolish Stateville and build a new prison on the site.

The latest announcement on Friday confirmed that the state will move ahead with the relocation of inmates now housed at Logan and provided other details on the construction plan.

The state has budgeted $900 million for the Crest Hill project, which is expected to take five years to build.

The news was welcomed at City Hall in Crest Hill, where the prison also is seen as a source of jobs as well as being a big customer for the city’s water and sewer services.

“I am very proud and very excited to have the construction of two new facilities – both a men’s and a women’s prison – in the city of Crest Hill,“ Mayor Ray Soliman said Monday.

For all the negative associations that come with prisons, they are typically valued by the communities in which they are located because of the economic benefits that come with the facilities.

Elected officials in the Lincoln area have objected to the state decision to close the Logan Correctional Center and continue to try to keep the prison in the community.

Stateville is “probably our number one employment center,” Soliman said.

The decision to rebuild a men’s prison and add a women’s prison at the Stateville site is to some degree a recognition of the ability of Crest Hill to provide the infrastructure needed for the project, Soliman said.

“We’ve always had a great relationship with the Department of Corrections,” the mayor said. “I think we have a better relationship now.”

Stateville has been outside of Crest Hill for most of its existence. It was annexed into the city in 1988.

Soliman noted that at peak incarceration during Stateville’s occupancy in the city, the prison had about 4,000 inmates. That number was down to fewer than 2,400 when Stateville was closed because older sections of the prison deemed no longer usable had been closed over the years.

State officials decided the prison no longer could be used and opted to rebuild rather than renovate Stateville.

“This marks a major milestone in the state’s effort to modernize Illinois’ correctional infrastructure, as capacity replacements for some of its oldest facilities that are beyond their useful life: Stateville Correctional Center, built in 1925, and Logan Correctional Center, which includes buildings dating back to the 1930s,” according to the release.

The Illinois Capital Development Board will hold outreach events for prospective vendors for the project on June 24 in Edwardsville,and June 26 in Chicago.

The state has contracted with Vanir Construction Management, Inc. and Milhouse Engineering & Construction, Inc. for the rebuild project at Stateville.