Developers Eye Soon-To-Close Harlem Prison, Reports Say

HARLEM, NY — The prison yard at Harlem's Lincoln Correctional Facility would make a perfect roof deck if it wasn't behind bars.

Real estate developers have identified the West 110th Street minimum-security prison as a hot property to watch since the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision announced it would close earlier this month, the Daily News first reported.

With undisturbed south-facing views of Central Park, the prison would make a perfect luxury condo redevelopment, real estate agents told the News. "That view doesn’t exist anywhere," Mae Bagai of Sotheby’s International Realty told the paper, adding that a development at the site could attract big-money buyers from places as far as China and the Middle East.

The state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision announced that Lincoln and the Livingston Correctional Facility in Western New York would close this year due to a drop in crime and a reduction in the state's prison population. The Harlem facility will be shut down and sold off within the next few months, the Daily New reported.

Empire State Development will likely handle the sale as it has with past shuttered government facilities, according to the report. Longtime residents of the prison's block told the paper that the building's sale, and possible future as condos, is an example of changes in the neighborhood.

The owner of a building next door to the prison, Gopi Menon, told the paper that he expects his own property to rise in value with the sale. But residents of the neighboring building were less enthusiastic about the change and worried that another high-rise may inflate rents in the area. Other neighbors told the News the state should try to repurpose the prison as a community facility.

A church on the same block as the Lincoln Correctional Facility offers a glimpse into the potential future of the prison site. La Hermosa Christian Church, located on Central Park North and Fifth Avenue, recently applied for a number of zoning amendments that would facilitate the construction of a 33-story development on its current site, according to an Environmental Assessment Statement filed with the Department of City Planning.

Check out the full Daily News article here.