Jail Time

By Jon Davis

Aging infrastructure isn't limited to bridges, roads, and pipes. Time also ravages the nation's municipal, county, state, and federal prisons.

In some places, prison populations fluctuate, causing some facilities to close and others to be consolidated. In others buildings simply reach the end of their functional lives, even if they are only a few decades old. Some prisons may see population declines as laws change significantly: Colorado and Washington have legalized recreational marijuana use, and 23 states (including those two) have legalized marijuana for controlled medical uses.

Sometimes, too, yesterday's accepted practices are now considered cruel and unusual conditions. Prison overcrowding is nothing new, but in August 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to stay or overturn previous federal court orders that California must release almost 10,000 prisoners to relieve overcrowding. (The then-target prison population: 110,000 inmates, or 137.5 percent of the system's capacity.)

The Sentencing Project, a Washington, D.C.-based organization that advocates prison reform and alternatives to incarceration, reports that 20 jails or prisons closed last year in at least six states, representing a drop of 11,370 beds and a cumulative first-year savings to governments of $189 million.

But while some ex-prisons become tourist destinations (California's Alcatraz) or popular movie and television sets (Illinois's Joliet Correctional Center), once most prisons close, communities must figure out what, if anything, can be done with a structure with limited repurposing potential. And the government that owns said building must still pay for basic maintenance and upkeep.

"The problem is those are really expensive spaces," says Michael McMillen, design director of the Closter, New Jersey, based Justice Solutions Group. "It takes forever. These buildings are so big and expensive and because of that, do you give up the whole thing or just a piece of it?"

Part of the problem lies in more contemporary prison design, McMillen says. Prison-type campuses built in more recent years have changed from the classic appearance; today they're more like housing units with a bay or open space in the middle, perhaps two levels. Part of the problem also lies in what prisons are. They're difficult to convert because they have lots of toilets, and iron bars over small, heavy-duty windows.

Some architects suggest using parts of a campus for other uses like education or community services, while the housing units themselves could be modified for other residential purposes that aren't prisons, but other justice-related housing.

Art seems to be staking prison turf, too. Many communities have converted prisons into live or work space for artists.

Follow the artists

The New York Times reported in April that Yonkers, New York, broke out (please pardon the expression) of its past last December when the Yonkers City Jail (1924–2013) was sold for $1 million to art collector Daniel Wolf and artist and architect Maya Lin, who plan to renovate it into art studios and a museum of sorts for his collection.

A decade ago, Jackson, Michigan, repurposed Michigan's original state prison into the Armory Arts Apartments, an $11 million conversion that created new live/work space for emerging artists.

"I'm convinced that if public agencies — public property holders — would say 'we've got a resource here and we've got to do something with it,' it doesn't have to be as expensive as everyone thinks. But how do you do that? I don't have the answer to that," McMillen says.

Champaign County, Illinois, will search for its answers via a facility needs survey approved in July, which will help decide what is to be done with the 34-year-old downtown jail in Urbana (deemed by the National Institute of Corrections in 2011 to be in "deplorable" condition) and the "satellite" jail in East Urbana.

Libby Tyler, FAICP, Urbana's community development director, says any discussion of a particular reuse for the downtown jail "is very preliminary at this point," but its proximity to the county's courthouse suggests it could quickly become law offices or something similar.

"From the city's perspective, we would certainly work with the county on any type of reuse or repurposing of the site. It's in a centrally located point downtown," Tyler says. "I don't think it would have an appreciable impact on our downtown other than becoming a redevelopment opportunity."

Interestingly, the county's process is being guided in part by a concord reached with the grassroots organization Champaign-Urbana Citizens for Peace and Justice, which since 2012 has forced the county to shelve a $20 million plan to build more prison space, instead increasing funding for social programs designed to keep people out of jail in the first place.

Suburban prison?

What was Fairfax County, Virginia, to do with the historic Lorton Prison, which opened in 1916 to house the District of Columbia's convicts — including women detained there from June to November 1917, during the Suffrage movement (documented by the film Iron Jawed Angels)? The prison had its own railroad (the Lorton and Occoquan, which operated from 1911 to 1977), and hosted a Nike missile base from 1954 to 1974. Its superintendent lived in the house of Revolutionary War figure William Lindsay.

Answer: Turn it into a new mixed use community renamed for Lindsay's erstwhile estate. The Laurel Hill redevelopment agreement, unanimously approved on July 29, 2014, by the Fairfax County Board, will create up to 412 apartment, condominium, and town house units along with 110,000 square feet of office and retail space and 20,000 square feet of community space. The prison's dorms and workshops will be repurposed as up to 225 apartment units. Developers The Alexander Company and Elm Street will work in two phases:

One, scheduled to begin in October, includes 165 apartments (including 44 affordable units located in former prison buildings, according to a county press release) and 107 new single-family houses. The apartments are scheduled to be ready by 2016, the houses by 2020.

The second, scheduled to begin in October 2016, is a redeveloped penitentiary area with 49,000 square feet of market-driven retail space and 74 town houses that should be completed by 2022.

The agreement allows for up to 60 additional apartments in the retail and office spaces if no renters are found for those areas after "substantial completion" of the relevant phase. But the developer must begin marketing those spaces concurrent with construction, and will have to prove to county officials that such a use conversion is necessary.

The county is leasing most of the land and buildings to the developers rent-free for 99 years, and chipping in $12.7 million over four fiscal years from the county's stormwater sewer and transportation funds for local infrastructure, including trails, some roads and sidewalks, and stormwater management.

The Alexander Company is also applying for state and federal historic preservation tax credits — something to consider for buildings that are 50 or more years old and listed on state and national historic registers, says Leanna Hush O'Donnell, AICP, a senior planner in Fairfax County's Planning and Zoning Department. The $190 million project is expected to generate $2.5 million in annual tax revenue and provide 300 jobs.

But July's vote came 15 years after Fairfax County started debating what to do with Lorton. Because the prison was on the National Register of Historic Places and had local restrictions on preservation and use, "we were starting with a requirement for adaptive reuse," O'Donnell says.

Lorton Prison closed in 2001, four years after a federal law transferred D.C.'s felons to federal prisons. Title to its 2,324 acres was given to Fairfax County in July 2002 for $4.2 million. A 55-acre portion of the site, including some former prison dorm buildings, was soon redeveloped as artist studios.

The remainder of the property was restricted to public land or park uses (and the redevelopment plan includes golf and Frisbee golf courses, a riding center, and other such uses). Discussion began in earnest in 1999, when the Laurel Hill Adaptive Reuse Citizen Task Force was convened.

But the initial start — which was essentially saying to the development community, "Here's the comprehensive plan, so what do we do with it?" — didn't work because there were too many unknowns about what could or would be allowed, which created too much uncertainty among developers about potential costs and profits, O'Donnell adds.

The Alexander Company, of Madison, Wisconsin, was subsequently engaged because it had experience redeveloping and repurposing historic properties, she says.

The county board approved a Laurel Hill Adaptive Reuse Area Master Plan in May 2010, and an interim agreement with The Alexander Company for some design, engineering, and zoning activities, and to determine financial costs of redevelopment, was signed in September 2011. A few months later, the board adopted the reuse master plan's recommendations into the county's own comprehensive plan.

Throughout the process, the task force served as a de facto steering committee and liaison between county planners and administrators, and the community. This, O'Donnell says, turned out to be a critical step in the long process because it helped ensure that any issues were addressed before developers' final proposals were made. "It's very important, if not the most important piece," she adds.

Another lesson learned is to start with the site as it is, including its challenges, and seek ideas and input from nearby residents and civic organizations, she adds. "It's critical to make sure you're talking with the community about plans, and get them involved early. The earlier the better," she says. "It's important to do that from the beginning."

More artists' cells, er, apartments

Jackson State Prison was Michigan's first prison, authorized by legislators in 1838 — just a year after the Wolverine State joined the union. A temporary building began housing prisoners in 1839; the permanent structure was built in 1842 and remained in use as a prison through 1934, after which inmates were housed in a new prison north of Jackson. The site was a National Guard armory for a while, but today it's Armory Arts Village, a live/work space for emerging artists.

With window bars still in place, Armory Arts was recognized by MSN Real Estate in 2010 as among "10 of the world's most unusual apartments."

Armory Arts opened as such in 2007, but not quite as originally planned. Since Michigan's housing authority contributed funds to the project, apartments could not be restricted to just artists who produce their works on-site; legally it had to be open to anyone who qualified for state housing assistance.

"You need to take a really good look at the funding sources you have available and at least know what their limitations are going into it so you know what type of requirements may or may not impact the overall idea or vision behind the whole project," says Grant Bauman, AICP, principal planner at the Region 2 Planning Commission, which provides planning, research, and advice to communities in south central Michigan.

Planning for Armory Arts began in 2002. Jackson's comprehensive plan was amended in 2003 to include the 19-acre prison site as an "arts colony area," and it was zoned as a planned unit development district. (It also sits within both a historic district and a state "renaissance" zone.) The city also approved it for "payment in lieu of taxes" — a program in which a percentage of rents minus utilities is paid in lieu of property taxes. State law allows a range of percentages, and Jackson charges four percent.

The Enterprise Group of Jackson County, a public-private partnership to promote economic development in Jackson County, bought the property from the Michigan Department of Veterans and Military Affairs in 2005, and took the project's lead. Construction began in 2006 and the first phase was completed in December 2007, bringing online 62 apartments with work spaces and galleries in three prison buildings.

The next phase, still under way, includes 49 apartments for seniors, a community activity center, and an artists' gallery.

Both Amy Torres, the Enterprise Group's vice president of economic development, and Bauman (who helped write the PUD ordinance for Armory Arts) say the PUD process — cumbersome as it can be at times — was a key tool to Armory Arts's success.

"As things change, as situations change, you have to be fairly flexible in making things like this work," Bauman says. "Amending the PUD makes that somewhat cumbersome, but communities that are working toward establishment of mixed use districts with the aim of going more toward a form-based code approach, which is the ultimate aim for the city of Jackson, those tools will ultimately be much more nimble in approaching the unforeseen opportunities and obstacles that arise in the economy and changing needs of everybody involved in a project like that."

Torres adds that without the PUD district in place, "it probably would have been impossible to build this."

The presence of strong collaborators was another advantage, she says, even with the challenge that creates over time as the different agendas of local governments, developers, and others jostle, and as both staff and elected officials come and go. "You've got to be able to maintain the strong partnership over time to maintain the vision," Torres says.

If a former prison is contaminated, as this one was — thanks to both prison industries of the 19th century and the National Guard's activities in the 20th — intergovernmental cooperation comes into play.

"Having an experienced brownfield authority . . . both the city of Jackson and the county of Jackson have brownfield authorities that worked in partnership, was key for the project," Torres says.

If creativity is the key to repurposing a prison, then Boston's 298-room Liberty Hotel might just be the planning equivalent of the trio who in June 1962 might have become the only successful escapees from Alcatraz.

The Liberty is the old Charles Street Jail, in use from 1851 to 1990. Massachusetts General Hospital acquired the property in 1991 and sought ideas to reuse it while requiring preservation of its architecturally significant elements. The luxury hotel opened in 2007. Its restaurants include The Alibi Room, Catwalk, The Yard, and Clink.

Jon Davis is a Chicago-based freelance writer.

Resources

Images: Top — Lorton Prison's penitentary area will be redeveloped to include 49,000 square feet of retail space. Photo courtesy The Alexander Company. Middle — Jackson State Prison, Michigan's first state prison, is now the Armory Arts Village, an affordable live/work community for artists and other creative people. Photos from top to bottom courtesy Jackson District Library; The Enterprise Group of Jackson; Michigan Asset Group; and The Enterprise Group of Jackson, Inc. photo by david Buchanan via Flickr. Bottom — Street view perspective of Laurel Hill. Courtesy Bignell Watkins Hasser Architects. Illustrative Laurel Hill site plan courtesy Studio39.