Alabama prison partially funded through COVID-19 relief funds will be named after Gov. Kay Ivey

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. ( WIAT ) — A billion-dollar prison that is being built in Elmore County partly using COVID-19 relief funds issued to the state will be named after Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey.

The prison, formerly the Elmore Specialized Men's Facility, will now be called the Governor Kay Ivey Correctional Complex. According to the Alabama Department of Corrections, the motion to name the prison after the governor was recently approved by the Alabama Corrections Institution Finance Authority.

The 54-building prison, which will house 4,000 inmates and cover 335 acres, is nearly halfway complete, ADOC reports.

Gina Maiola, communications director for Ivey's office, said it was ADOC Commissioner John Hamm's idea to name the new prison after Ivey, of which she gave her blessing.

"There is no governor in Alabama's history who has done more to improve the state's corrections system than Governor Ivey, so it is fitting that one of the new facilities will bear her name," Maiola said in a written statement. "And her work on this issue is certainly not done."

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State leaders first began discussing building new prisons in Elmore and Escambia counties, passing legislation to spend $1.25 billion to build the prisons. Through the process, it was decided that roughly $400 million that had been allocated to the state through the American Rescue Plan Act would be used toward the projects. ARPA was created in 2021 to help states recover both physically and financially at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Despite the U.S. Department of Treasury ruling that new prisons was not an eligible use of the money , the Alabama Department of Finance claimed that the prison plan was "not impacted by the US Department of the Treasury's Final Rule," according to the Associated Press.

Throughout the last couple of years, the price tag for the Elmore prison ballooned from the projected $623 million to over $1 billion.

The Governor Kay Ivey Correctional Complex is set to be completed in May 2026.