ATLANTA — How do you re-purpose an old jail? It’s a question being asked by an Atlanta task force, meeting Tuesday for the first time.
The jail is the City Detention Center in Downtown Atlanta, ordered closed by Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms due to lack of inmates.
The 471,000 square foot building opened in the mid 90s. It has space for 1,300 beds.
The best thing about it may be its location – on the south end of Downtown Atlanta, right across from a MARTA rail station.
"If we can be thoughtful and strategic and find the right philanthropic and nonprofit partners, I really think there’s an opportunity to do something special here that will spill into other neighborhoods," said Matt Westmoreland, one of two Atlanta city council members serving on the task force.
Westormoreland has already seen renderings of the city jail imagined as a Downtown community center. But there are other options.
In Boston, the colonial-era Charles Street Jail is now a luxury hotel.
In Tennessee, the Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary – the place that once held the assassin of Martin Luther King Jr. – is now a distillery, and museum.
South of Atlanta, a woman bought the old Meriwether County Jail at auction and converted it into a single family home – with a possible event space.
"I think it’d be a great place for shotgun weddings and – I have a list of ideas," owner Maria Gosden told 11Alive News in 2015.
Around the country, other jails have been turned into apartment buildings, and homeless shelters. A jail in Staten Island NY recently began converting to a movie studio.
The Atlanta jail has similar possibilities – as well as its own challenges.
"How (do) we take a building that’s that big and make it to be more useful and a more positive use to the community?" Westomoreland asked.
Westmoreland says the city owns the building, giving it flexibility in deciding how to reuse it. He says the city spent $33 million last year to run the jail, including staff.
One option Westmoreland says the task force is unlikely to discuss – much – is keeping the city jail as a jail. Fulton County doesn’t have enough jail space, but talks to use the city facility stalled years ago.
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