ALBANY - Vacancies in psychiatric centers could soon serve as temporary holding stations for New York state's most violent sex offenders.

Under the plan in Gov. George Pataki's budget proposal, $35 million would be set aside to create separate treatment areas in existing psychiatric centers in New York City, Marcy in central New York, Rochester, and Ogdensburg.

The five sites would hold up to 623 sex offenders while a proposed 500-bed facility is built at the state's secure Camp Pharsalia in Chenango County. That facility would cost $130 million and open in 2009. An additional $27 million would be needed for staffing and operations of the temporary sites next year.

“People would be moved into the (temporary) sites as they become available,” said Martha Schaefer Hayes, of the Office of Mental Health.

So far, 41 inmates have been civilly committed at the Manhattan Psychiatric Center, the Kirby Forensic in New York City's Ward's Island and Central New York Forensic in Marcy. They are kept separate from patients.

OMH has identified psychiatric centers where beds will become available until Pharsalia would open.

An empty building near the St. Lawrence Psychiatric Center in Ogdensburg, for example, would be renovated to house up to 80 civilly confined child molesters and sexual predators through December 2006. Though the secure facility is on the outskirts of town, it is still less than two miles away from two elementary schools.

Another empty building at the Mid-State Correctional Facility in Marcy would be fixed to hold 148 sex offenders through June 2009.