Officials Cut Ribbon on Jail-Turned-Office Building

Some comedians joke about work as a prison. Now a former Towson jail is home to 40 employees.

Officials dedicated Bosley Hall in a brief ceremony on Monday morning. The 8,124-square foot space already houses several tech companies and a commercial wine storage firm.

Originally built as the Baltimore County Jail in 1854, the building sits on a very visible corner of Bosley Avenue and Towsontown Boulevard. The building housed inmates until 2006, when the Baltimore County Detention Center expansion opened. A portion of the building was demolished after that and the site lay dormant until 2009, when the Azola Companies offered to lease it from the Department of Recreation and Parks.

"It's become a vital part of our county's history and quite frankly we could not let it simply waste away," County Executive Kevin Kamenetz said in prepared remarks on Monday. "We were able to trandsform a mothballed old jail into an important part of the towson core."

Kamenetz added that no public money was used in funding the building's $1.7 million rehabilitation, though Azola's project did receive historic tax credits.

The building is now mostly leased, officials say. The land around it will also become much busier in the summer of 2012, when the Towson Swim Club is currently set to open (the original date, in 2011, ).