State Inmates Move Downtown After Long Struggle, Work-Release Program Ready For Brownstone

Second Chance is getting its own second chance in downtown Spokane.

After a long court dispute and the temporary loss of all its clients and most of its employees, the program will move state work-release inmates into the Brownstone Building at Third and Browne on Sunday.

“It’s the end of a long struggle,” said Bruce Kuennen, chief of operations for Second Chance in Eastern Washington. “We feel like we’ll be good neighbors, and we’re real proud of the new facility and program we’re going to operate there.”

For more than a year, the three-story brick Brownstone Building has sat empty amid protest.

Neighboring businesses sued to stop Second Chance, a private non-profit company, from relocating its work-release center downtown, saying it violated state law and city zoning ordinances.

Parents of nearby Dynamic Christian Academy students sold more than 100 dozen roses to help finance the fight.

As the case went to court, Cornelius House, Second Chance’s site on West Mallon, was declared unsafe and closed. Inmates moved first into temporary quarters at Pine Lodge Pre-Release, then to Geiger Corrections Center. The state suspended its contract with Second Chance. The week before Thanksgiving, the company laid off 17 local employees.

Then Superior Court Judge Neal Q. Rielly ruled last month that the city had permitted the facility properly.

Almost immediately, the Federal Bureau of Prisons moved eight work-release inmates into Brownstone. On Thursday, the state Department of Corrections signed a two-year contract with Second Chance to resume the program.

Top corrections officials, including Kaye Adkins, the regional administrator, and Cyrus McLean, who supervises Brownstone for the state, began visiting neighbors to allay concerns. They gave out numbers for their personal beepers.

The result: leading opponent Patty Marinos has agreed to serve on an advisory board to the work-release program and the selection committee for a new director of the state inmates.

“I feel like the (Department of Corrections’) attempt is very sincere. I think they’re honest and want to work with us,” said Marinos, director of Dynamic Christian Academy. “I want to be hopeful.”

For years, Brownstone was sliding toward grimness. Its primary tenant, the Gold Coin Market, was a well-known outlet for fortified wine. Visitors to Brownstone this week kept jokingly asking for the beer cooler.

The building was uninhabitable by the time owner Mick McDowell invested $1.5 million in removing two inches of pigeon excrement and four truckloads of garbage from the place in 1996.

A new heating system, an addition for fire stairs and 15 miles of new copper piping was installed. The building now includes four-person rooms, burgundy carpet and green trim.

“It’s just a much better place for offenders to work and live,” McLean said.

By month’s end, 64 state inmates and 20 federal inmates are expected to live there.

Inmates accepted into the program are within six months of being released from prison. They must pay the state $12.50 per day for room and board, hold jobs and undergo regular tests for drugs and alcohol.

Six Department of Corrections employees, including McLean and three community corrections officers, work in the building. At least two Second Chance employees are in the building 24 hours a day.

A fence was erected so smoking inmates aren’t mistaken for loiterers outside the building.

McLean said the program, within blocks of three schools, does not accept Level 2 or 3 sex offenders, but any other convict eligible for release from prison is eligible to apply.

Under the conditions of its permit, Second Chance will report to the city hearing examiner again in about two years to ensure the conditions are being met. The Seattle-based non-profit operates several facilities in the state, including Eleanor Chase House work-release for women in Spokane and a juvenile boot camp at Connell, Wash.

Marinos said she and other neighbors expect to work closely with McLean to hold the contractor accountable. They are proposing an offlimits buffer zone around her school, as well as other ways to track inmates’ movement.

“We are going to do whatever it takes to hold them accountable in our neighborhood,” she said. “I told Kaye (Adkins) I never want to have to talk to you and say I told you so.”

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