We’ve got some potentially interesting housing to go with the Boerum Hill donuts reported this morning, as there are developments in the continuing saga of the Brooklyn House of Detention, the closed 760-bed jail on Atlantic Avenue between Smith Street and Boerum Place. Dumbo developer Jed Walentas, the Brooklyn Paper reports, is proposing knocking down the current Big House (renovated over the last decade to the tune of $50 million) and replacing it with two Big Houses, one a luxury building and the other for inmates. Meanwhile, the Department of Corrections is sorting through proposals for the prime property and looking into plans to reopen the House of D (as a jail), with retail at street level. Rather gives new meaning to "mixed use" development, doesn't it?
While we're on the subject, what’s up with Big House conversions? As noted here yesterday, the former Parkside Correctional Facility in Harlem is going condo. We could start pitching names—like Five2Ten or The Commissary—but that would be wrong. Very wrong.
· Fatness Machine Rolls into Boerum Hill [Curbed]
· Walentas: Call My New Condo “House of D” [BklynPaper]
· Atlantic Avenue Jail May Serve as Jail [Curbed]
[Photo courtesy of RubyMae on Flickr]