Prison work crews clean up J&L site

It was hidden under a shroud of green. More than 40 truckloads of brush and vines later, the old Jones & Lamson Machine Tool building has re-emerged from a cloak of green.
http://www.rutlandherald.com/article/20120911/NEWS02/709119915

Published September 11, 2012 in the Rutland Herald Prison work crews clean up J&L site By SUSAN SMALLHEER Staff Writer SPRINGFIELD — It was hidden under a shroud of green. More than 40 truckloads of brush and vines later, the old Jones & Lamson Machine Tool building has re-emerged from a cloak of green. “There’s a building there,” said Angie Hinton, the community service workcamp leader, only half-facetiously. “The ivy had covered all the windows,” said Brad Veysey, 29, of Springfield, one of a crew of 10 Vermont prison inmates who had been working at the old factory building. Veysey grew up in Springfield, and his only memory of the building was one shrouded in vines. Marion Russell, 37, of Bennington, said the physical labor was welcome after days of inaction in a prison. Both Veysey and Russell, actually most of the men on the prison work crew, were serving time for selling drugs. “To actually see the bare building was great,” said Veysey. “You couldn’t even see the stairs,” said Russell, who originally comes from Brooklyn, N.Y. The crew members all said getting out, being active and accomplishing something was far better than staying in prison “and getting fat,” as one inmate said. Work crews from the Windsor state prison have been working on cutting brush that had grown up along the foundation of the historic building, which was once the heart of the local machine took industry. “I just got tired of looking at it,” said Bob Flint, the executive director of the Springfield Regional Development Corp., which now owns the building and is in the process of removing environmental contamination, the first step toward redeveloping the Clinton Street site. J&L’s iconic stately maple trees line Clinton Street, and frame the 19th century industrial brick building, which had long been a symbol of local pride, but more recently, frustration. Thirty years ago J&L employed 1,200 people, making state-of-the-art computer-controlled lathes used to cut metal to make other machines or tools. It had been located on Clinton Street for more than 100 years. But getting the building back into productive mode has been long, hard and expensive. The last owners, before the local, nonprofit development group was The Goldman Group. Flint said his organization had owned J&L for 10 years. Sections of the Clinton Street building date back to 1907, he said. Work crew members said they got to learn some of the local history behind the building, and when it would be back providing jobs. “A lot of people have given us a thumbs up,” said Joseph Strong, 31, of Winooski. Howard Dease, 41, of Bennington, said the work crew helped the inmates reintegrate to the community. “I’ve been locked up for four and a half years,” said Dease. “This is a good transition,” he said, noting he would have been released already, but he’s waiting for a residential placement. He came to Vermont from New York to sell drugs and got caught, he said. George Murphy Jr., 41, also of Bennington, said he landed in prison for drinking while on probation. He said the work crew gave him “time to himself,” while getting exercise and getting something done. “I like doing this,” he said. Earlier this summer, they cut brush at the American Precision Museum in Windsor, which in its original life also played a key role in the machine tool industry. Paul Brosseau, work crew foreman supervisor for the Windsor prison, said the work crews help towns and state agencies, as well as nonprofit organizations such as SRDC. “We go out and provide community service, it’s a good thing. It allows the guys to go out and (develop) some work ethic and learn some new skills,” he said. The work crews have done a lot of post-Irene jobs, said Hinton, who said her crew did a lot of work on deluged playgrounds and parks in Hartford, West Hartford and Quechee. Brosseau said the crews have done work for the town of Springfield, in particular cutting brush at the town-owned Weathersfield reservoir. “We do a lot of work in Hartford, Windsor, West Windsor and Springfield,” he said. “We’ve worked in Ludlow, Fairlee, Shrewsbury.” Work crews pick up trash along roads, paint churches and mow state or local properties, he said, and also cut firewood for needy Vermonters. The crews even put up the mobile version of the Vietnam Veterans Wall, which came to Springfield this summer. Only three prisons in the state have work crews, he said, Windsor, St. Johnsbury and the women’s prison in So. Burlington. He said that inmates are only low-level offenders and must be within 30 months of getting out of prison. He said the work crews are currently lined up to do several projects for Springfield On The Move, the local downtown revitalization group, on several cleanup and painting jobs. The work crews started the job about a month ago, and alternated the Springfield job with helping to clean up the state office complex in Waterbury, said Hinton, the state corrections work crew chief. All the inmates are nonviolent offenders and no sexual offenders are allowed on the minimal security work detail. The work crew members said most of the inmates in Windsor were sexual offenders, and not eligible for work crew. The 10-man crew put in about a five-hour day on Clinton Street Monday, before packing up and heading back to the state prison in Windsor with their chainsaws, weed whackers and assorted hand tools. According to Hinton, the crew will finish up the J&L job Tuesday. “This was a cool job for us,” she said. And not a moment too soon. Gov. Peter Shumlin is slated to make an announcement at J&L on Thursday afternoon about a new grant from the Environmental Protection Agency to help clean up the old factory. Len Emery Photo Four work release prisoners clean up the Clinton Sreet facade of the old Jones and Lamson building in Springfield.