Intently focused on a glowing Power Point presentation at the front of the room, legislators got their first peek Tuesday at consultants' drawing of what they believe a new North Dakota State Penitentiary should look like.

The proposed new prison includes 36.2 acres of fenced in space, podular units to house inmates and a separate minimum security facility outside the fence line.

It is being designed to accommodate 1,000 beds by 2017 and could include features such as better lines of sight for guards, a tunnel system to more easily get from building to building during winter and an environmentally green design.

The plan presented to the interim Correctional Facility Review Committee Tuesday is just an initial development concept of what a prison would look like if it were to be built from scratch on open space. Over the next two months the consultants -Criminal Justice Institute and DMJM Design - will be fitting their idea to proposed sites and determining whether their goals can be accomplished with a remodeling of the facility.

Since being hired by the state last summer, the consultants have been evaluating the state prison system's needs to come up with Tuesday's sketch and the future refinement of it. They were hired after the 2007 Legislature couldn't decide on how to proceed on fixing the state's aging prison facility.

Lawmakers set aside $41 million to study and remodel the prison in the interim, but decided against making the decision to begin remodeling in the interim after an attorney general's opinion questioned the legitimacy of such a more.

Senate Majority Leader Bob Stenehjem, R-Bismarck, said he's finally getting the answers he was looking for at the end of last session when trying to make a decision on how to proceed.

"The best recommendation may be to spend the $41 million to remodel, or it may be something completely different," he said.

Rep. Chet Pollert, a Carrington Republican who's chairing the interim prison committee, said he's happy with how the process is going.

"We're going to have so much information that we're going to be able to make a good decision," he said.

Before revealing their recommendation Tuesday, the consultants took lawmakers through an exhaustive examination of all the other options they considered when trying to design an ideal prison for North Dakota.

Jeff Buck, a principal with DMJM, said they had to account for the space requirements of various programs like drug rehabilitation, the maximization of staffing efficiency, adequate medical facilities and North Dakota's cold climate among other things. He showed legislators facilities from New Jersey to California, including a giant 3,000-bed campus from Virginia.

"You don't need this," Buck told the committee. "Fortunately, North Dakota is way behind the rest of the prison population. It may happen, but hopefully it's a long way away."

At later stages, legislators will have to decide on details such as how environmentally green they want the new facility to be. Buck said it would cost nothing extra to incorporate basic green aspects such as a design that maximizes natural light and minimizes outer wall space to reduce heating requirements. But Additional green aspects could be added but would probably result in added costs, he said.

Consultants will be presenting them final plans - including estimated cost figures - on March 3. The final decision on construction of a new prison or a remodeling of the existing facility is expected to come during the 2009 legislative session.

(Reach reporter Jonathan Rivoli at 223-8482 or jonathan.rivoli@bismarcktribune.com)