We had visitors from out of town recently and we took them to lunch at the American Tobacco Campus. On the way one of our guests pointed to a large, white monolithic structure and asked, “What is that thing?” Oh, that’s our jail, I said. “It’s bigger than Alcatraz,” they quipped. They were joking, but our jail is actually TWICE as big as Alcatraz. Alcatraz had a capacity of 336 and our jail now holds 700.
So in demand are the beds in Durham’s big house that they’re now talking about adding a 300-bed addition. With the success of the American Tobacco Campus and the soon-go-be-built $44 million performing arts center nearby, let’s hope the “Field of Dreams” analogy holds for those, as it did for the jail.
