Yes, Yes — In My Backyard!

Not everyone dislikes the idea of reopening the Atlantic Avenue Jail:

When YaYa Ceesay’s dream of opening a soul food restaurant came true in 2003, business, at first, boomed. He had found a great spot along an up-and-coming stretch of Atlantic Avenue across the street from the Brooklyn House of Detention and quickly built a strong group of regulars.

He opened the doors each day at 6 a.m., and from then until after the lunch crowd headed back to work, his restaurant, the Soul Spot, was packed with correction officers, prisoners’ families, neighborhood residents and passers-by. Fish and grits, chicken and waffles, scrambled eggs, salmon cakes — you name it he served it.

But in June 2003, three months after his glorious introduction to Brooklyn, the jail closed and the breakfast crowd disappeared. Three months after that, Mr. Ceesay was forced to trim the Soul Spot’s menu, and he moved back its daily start time to just before noon.

When the prison population left, he said, about 20 percent of his customers went with it.

Now that the city’s Department of Correction has said that it wants to reopen the jail and double the inmate population in five years, Mr. Ceesay and many other nearby business owners are saying they will be more than happy to provide food or services to those who will work there or who will visit the people held within.

. . .

But not everyone is quite so happy that a jail that once held 700 inmates will hold more than 1,400 if plans become reality.

Some residents in the area said that what is good for the mom-and-pop businesses might not be so good for the moms and pops whose new condominiums, many worth several hundred thousand dollars, would be just down the street from the repopulated jail.

“Go ask the parents of the schoolkids who go to Packer who will have to walk past the jail on their way to the store for a bag of potato chips,” said Corey Baylor, an investment banker who moved into a State Street condo four days ago, referring to the Packer Collegiate Institute on Joralemon Street. When the jail closed, the area surrounding the corner of Atlantic Avenue and Boerum Place, where it sits, was trying to reinvent itself. It was an unremarkable neighborhood of gas stations and hunched old office buildings. Today it is home to some of the newest high-end apartment buildings in Brooklyn. There’s a sparkling new YMCA a block away from the old jail, a high-rise is being built next door and rows of condos line State Street a block away.

Location Scout: Atlantic Avenue Jail/Brooklyn House of Detention.