[Preston - School of Industry] Operated for 117 years for youthful offender rehabilitation, Preston Youth Facility was closed by the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation in June 2011 and authorized as surplus property by Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. in October 2017.
Historic Preston Restoration Foundation – registered with the California Secretary of State on August 5, 2016 – is a 501 C-3 nonprofit community organization. The abbreviated title is The Foundation or HPRF. The primary purpose of the Foundation (HPRF) is to provide guidance and leadership for the management, restoration, redevelopment, and repurposing of the extraordinary California state historic site that was first established in 1894 as the Preston School of Industry.
Within the facility that was closed in June 2011 by the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, most of the structures are significant historic resources associated with the National Historic Place designated in 1974 as Preston Castle. Historic Preston Restoration Foundation (HPRF) from the outset prepared for a transfer acquisition and public endowment by the State of California, for renewal of the area south of Preston Castle that formerly served as extensive employee housing for custody and ancillary staff at Preston School of Industry.
When Governor Edmond G. Brown Jr. in 2016 received from the HPRF board of directors a Resolution and request for his support, the Governor’s staff referred the correspondence to the department offices of Corrections and General Services. After reviewing the Foundation proposal, department leaders in 2017 determined to surplus the full historic site.
For more than nine years only the Office of Business Services at Mule Creek State Prison assisted the interests of the local community in maintaining and seeking to protect the infrastructure and the historic significance of Preston School of Industry. Since January 2018, the entire 85-acre historic site is surplus state property.