A plaque recognizing the work of the inmates at Camp Gabriels in building the trails at the Visitors Iinterpretive CenterAfter the Gabriels Sanatorium closed, Paul Smith's College purchased the property in August 1965, as an extension center for their growing Forestry Program. PSC closed the Gabriels campus in 1980, and sold the facility to the State of New York to be used for a minimum security prison.
Camp Gabriels received its first draft of inmates on August 30, 1982. These residents were transferred from the Adirondack Correctional Facility, which had been upgraded from a Camp to a Medium Security Facility. Camp Gabriels operated until 2009, when it was closed by Governor Andrew Cuomo. It has been for sale by the state since then, and was sold in early 2014, according to the Adirondack Daily Enterprise. [That sale was not completed and the property remains in state hands in February, 2023.]
Adirondack Daily Enterprise, April 29, 1982
September opening slated for Gabriels
By CAROL BRUCE
SARANAC LAKE "Construction should start in May...and we shouldn't be in much before September," State Corrections Commissioner Thomas Coughlin told guests at the local Chamber of Commerce luncheon yesterday in a discussion on the minimum security prison in Gabriels.
Coughlin told an audience of about 30 that the Corrections Department will be using existing buildings on the site to house about 150 inmates. Only ninety-two acres of the 224 sold to the state by Paul Smith's College will be used, Coughlin said, adding that there will be "a 128 acre buffer zone given to the DEC (Department of Environmental Conservation) for forest preservation."
"We don't want to see that place become a sprawling complex," Coughlin added.
During a question and answer period, Town of Brighton Supervisor James Bickford asked if renovations and clearing of the site would level a wooded area between there and Rainbow Lake Road homes. Trees now block the view of the prison site from the roadway. Both Coughlin and Paul Smith's College Thomas Stainback repeated that only existing buildings would be used and since none are now visible to residents on the road, the status quo should remain.
"If that is the plan it would help residents accept it," Bickford said.
Asked by a member of the audience, if he could guarantee that the facility would not be upgraded (to medium or maximum security) Coughlin said he couldn't promise. He would say, "Gabriels is going to stay a 150-man prison."
He pointed out that expansion at Camp Adirondack in Ray Brook (now the Adirondack Correctional Facility) was possible because space was available in existing buildings. Claiming that only 15 acres of the Gabriels site would be open to expansion, he said the "potential for growth is not present" at Gabriels. The present buildings are on 78 acres of the property.
In answer to a question from Michael DeNunzio of Elizabethtown, Coughlin promised that a full environmental impact statement will be complete by the time the prison opens.
That opening, Coughlin reminded his audience, should be welcomed in the economically depressed North Country. The many new jobs, in and outside the facility, plus a payroll of $1 1/2 million should be a shot in the arm to the area, he predicted.
Job security was all but assured, he added, noting that "we have never had to close a prison" in New York State.
Although he continued to stress the need for more prisons statewide, Coughlin said yesterday that fears that the Adirondack Park would become a "penal colony" were unfounded and that no more prisons are being planned for the Park.
The Adirondack Park Agency and a group of Gabriels residents opposed to the prison have both used the "penal colony" argument in their fight to defeat plans to open a third prison within a 25 mile radius in the Tri-Lakes.
Coughlin did say that the Department of Corrections is planning to rebuild a few buildings on a site in Chazy. The site is already owned by the state in conjunction with the Dannemora prison and will be used for prisoner work-release programs. However, Coughlin did not say if the land is within the park — Dannemora prison is.
