Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, August 17, 1993 TAG: 9308170116
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By CAROLYN CLICK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: COVINGTON LENGTH: Long
James Clowser, a former West Virginia deputy mental health commissioner, said he and his group of Virginia investors, operating as Greenbrier Medical Group Inc., will probably decide this week whether to seek another site.
"We're just not going to take a pounding if we are not wanted in Alleghany County," said Clowser. Virginia stockholders include Covington ophthalmologist Krishna Sankar, who owns the land, and three area businessmen, Clowser said.
Clowser, who gained notoriety in 1987 when he was linked to a phony Saudi Arabian prince in a West Virginia hospital deal, said he has been frustrated by bad press and mounting citizen opposition.
He said the 50-room, $3.5 million facility has been unfairly labeled a prison rather than a center that would serve trusty-type inmates incarcerated for nonviolent, white-collar crimes.
"We're going to make a decision this week to either fight it or pull out," said Clowser. "Right now I can't say what we are going to do."
Even more crippling was the Justice Department's reaction to the proposal.
Donald Comer, a contracting officer with the Federal Bureau of Prisons, an agency of the Justice Department, said Greenbriar Medical's proposal has been tentatively approved, but only for nine beds.
"They haven't been awarded the contract," said Comer.
He said the group's 100-bed proposal, which would involve bringing pregnant prisoners from other East Coast prisons through Alderson and on to the Low Moor birthing facility, "is something they are proposing on their own."
That wasn't quite the way it was presented to the Alleghany County Board of Supervisors and the Planning Commission last Wednesday.
Clowser suggested then that the group had a green light and a five-year contract from the Justice Department.
Initially, he said the investors hoped to house the women in a Covington motel owned by Sankar, but County Attorney Wayne Heslip said that would not be allowed.
The project drew immediate opposition from Low Moor residents, although Clowser received some unexpected backing from nurses who fear the birthing center at Alleghany Regional Hospital will close if more business is not generated.
Under Greenbrier's proposal, the prisoners would spend two months prior to birth at the facility, have the baby at Alleghany Regional and then remain at the center for three more months to bond with the infant.
Clowser said most of the women would likely be released to their home communities after their babies were born.
The hospital already serves pregnant inmates at Alderson but that involves only about eight or nine births annually.
Low Moor residents like James Downey believed the developers deliberately downplayed the security aspects and emphasized the 65 jobs the project would create for the financially strapped county.
"We're not getting a bunch of Sunday school teachers here. We are getting a bunch of prisoners," said Downey, a retired railroad worker who has spent most of his life in Alleghany County.
"It's a super sales job," he said. "They are not interested in these girls; they are interested in money."
An even more practical question remained: Who will deliver the babies?
Alleghany County made headlines three years ago when the hospital closed its obstetrics ward for lack of obstetricians.
Now there are two obstetricians in the county, Dr. Darryl Barnes and Dr. Beulah Roblete.
But Barnes said "unless we recruit just one more obstetrician, the one practicing with me [Dr. Roblete] will cease Jan. 1."
Barnes said he has not been approached by the federal government or Greenbrier Medical to discuss the realities of serving up to 100 expectant federal prisoners.
He has no qualms about serving the female prisoners at Alderson who now travel to the hospital for their check-ups and for the births. Nor would he be concerned about housing them locally.
"My only concern is the manpower situation," he said. "I think we should take care of our own first."
Although the developers use Greenbrier Medical Group Inc. as their company name, that company was involuntarily dissolved in 1989 because of failure to pay taxes and file annual reports, according to the West Virginia State Corporation Division.
The company was legally chartered as of July 14 in West Virginia under the title Low-Moor Inc. Shirley Clowser, James Clowser's wife, and Cordelia Reed, wife of Clowser's partner, James C. Reed Jr., are listed as the company's directors.
Clowser explained that Greenbrief Medical Group was chartered but never used and said the company owes no back taxes.
Low-Moor Inc.'s parent company is Clowser, Reed and Associates. Clowser initially described the parent company as Potomac House Inc.
But the West Virginia State Corporation Division showed that Potomac House Inc. was involuntarily dissolved in 1985 for failure to pay taxes and file annual reports.
Clowser said he had not realized the company had been dissolved until consultation with Reed, his lawyer. He said the company did not owe any back taxes and simply let the charter expire.
Potomac House sold off a string of health care facilities in the 1980s, including Shenandoah Manor Nursing Home and Shenandoah Manor Adult Care in Clifton Forge.
But Clowser said his company still holds the mortgages on the two Clifton Forge facilities and a nursing home in Ronceverte, W.Va., because the purchasing company failed to pay its bills.
Clowser, who served under former West Virginia Gov. Arch Moore, said he was approached by officials at Alderson prison because of his experience in developing a pilot project in the early 1980s at his Ronceverte nursing home.
"We did not experience any problems with any of those girls," said Clowser, who scattered the inmates throughout the nursing home. "When the babies came back, our nursing home residents would stand in line, both men and women, to rock those babies."
In 1987, Clowser was linked to a phony Saudi Arabian prince in a failed hospital deal in West Virginia.
Clowser claimed a group led by a man who called himself Prince Ahmed bin Abdulrahman was prepared to lend $35 million for a 220-bed psychiatric hospital project in Beckley, W.Va.
The prince, who came under investigation by the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office, turned out to be a fraud and left the state before a grand jury was convened.
by CNB