For nearly two centuries, many of Canada’s most notorious criminals laid their heads down every night inside the walls of 560 King Street West — better known as Kingston Penitentiary.
But would you consider making those same grounds your home?
Last year, Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC) added the infamous, 10-hectare prison site to its list of federal properties with housing potential, raising the question:
What if the “big house” became your house?
Documents obtained by CBC through an access to information (ATIP) request reveal what’s envisioned: levelling the back half of the national historic site in order to build up to 700 units, including high-rise buildings overlooking Lake Ontario.
Internal emails describe the move as a way to wake up a “sleeping giant” and show that developers have expressed interest in giving it new life.
Even though those plans are far from being realized, some say the idea of remaking the “Alcatraz of the North” into a housing development threatens an important piece of Kingston’s heritage, one that draws film companies, thousands of visitors and millions of dollars.
“When I first heard about it, I was like, ‘What the heck?’” says Kingston and the Islands MP Mark Gerretsen, who grew up a few blocks away.
“A conversion of a property like this is, in my opinion, just wildly impractical.”
A ‘dark’ history
Kingston Pen opened in 1835, decades before Canada became a country. In those days inmates weren’t allowed to speak and even children were locked up.
For the next 178 years, until it closed in 2013, the facility operated 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The Pen survived multiple fires and deadly riots, including one quelled by troops who marched in with fixed bayonets.
The craftsmanship of its buildings helped it become a national historic site in 1990.
A number of infamous inmates, including serial killer Paul Bernardo, child murderer Clifford Olson and disgraced colonel Russell Williams, were incarcerated there.
“It really housed the full spectrum of the human experience here, from life and death to fear and jubilation,” says Dave St. Onge.
A historian and curator at Canada’s Penitentiary Museum, St. Onge calls Kingston Pen the “birthplace” of Canada’s correctional service and the model for all other prisons across the country — a place where theories were tested and hard lessons learned.
The prison also provided jobs for generations of correctional officers and staff, he says.
While life behind bars is usually consigned to “dark history” and often ignored, the site and its convicts are nevertheless part of our country’s story, St. Onge says.
The original uniforms for the RCMP, then known as the North-West Mounted Police, were sewn in the prison’s shops, and ironwork that adorns the Library of Parliament was fabricated there too, he points out.
“There’s been this view that Canada is Mounties and beavers … We had this side as well,” St. Onge says.
Kingston Penitentiary permanently shut its doors in 2013. CBC looked back at the history of the prison that housed some of Canada’s most notorious criminals.
‘Could be viewed as insensitive’
Plans for the prison’s potential redevelopment come as Canada is facing a housing crisis and the federal government is trying to streamline construction on properties in its portfolio.
But there are questions in Kingston about how practical or even ethical it would be to rework the site — and about what would have to be sacrificed to make it liveable.
In Feb. 2025, Gerretsen wrote a letter to the public works and procurement minister at the time — his Liberal Party colleague Jean-Yves Duclos — questioning the “appropriateness” of the site for housing development.
“Repurposing the penitentiary for residential living could be viewed as insensitive and ethically questionable, given its history,” Gerretsen wrote.
St. Onge wonders about investing “significant” amounts of money into a place with, “if you believe in it, the spirits that may be lingering around this site.”
“Just morally … there’s some questions there,” he says.
Those who live nearby have strong opinions.
To “get rid of all the evil spirits,” the prison should be burned to the ground, Kingston resident Karen Toffolo says.
“A lot of bad stuff happened in there and we don’t need that around anymore. Make it into a nice park or something,” she said last week while walking in the area.
Carol Buss can see the prison out her bedroom window. She says 700 units is too many, especially if they end up being condos.
“The city needs housing, but I would prefer low rise, not high rise,” she says.
‘Sleeping giant’
Through its ATIP request, CBC obtained 152 pages of documents and emails about the decision to add Kingston Penitentiary to the Canada Public Land Bank, a list that also includes underused federal office buildings and vacant lots.
According to one comment emailed to PSPC staff, the penitentiary site has “great potential” but is not immediately shovel ready, while a December 2024 housing assessment described it as complex and containing two contaminated areas.
The estimated value of the property, which earned a location score of 16/20, was redacted from the documents, as were the names of two groups interested in the land.
One group identified itself as a Montreal-based developer proposing affordable housing and willing to engage “quickly.” The other is a builder with experience in Kingston and Ottawa that envisions mainly apartments and condos with commercial space on the ground floor.
Some of “the most appropriate buildings” could be retained for heritage purposes, according to the latter group.
That idea is similar to the recommendation coming out of a “public visioning exercise” undertaken in 2015 by the City of Kingston and Canada Lands Company (CLC), which helps PSPC lease or sell federal properties.
“[They suggested] redeveloping about 50 per cent of the site (generally the south/lakeshore end) with preservation of the road-front walls, guard towers, main cell block, etc.,” according to a March 2025 email from PSPC’s manager of regional disposals. “The remaining structures would be mixed-use repurposed or cleared for new construction, including housing, some of it high-rise.”
“Kingston Pen has been a ‘sleeping giant’ for the last five years, but we are trying to push forward,” the PSPC manager added.
A city report states that the visioning exercise was presented as “most likely the only mechanism” for the community to have a say in the future of the site.
But a later email from that same PSPC manager, sent after the Pen was added to the list of properties that could become housing, flagged some potential difficulty in pushing the project forward.
“We are at an impasse as to disposal strategy, with the CLC satisfied it is not possible to secure required zoning with the city and therefore not interested in the property,” he wrote.
There’s another obstacle: the site is currently not included on the Canada Land Bank’s map of available properties, which means developers don’t have a way to signal interest.
PSPC says it was removed from that list in the fall of 2025 while the department explores a possible lease for the site, but it is not saying with whom.
The department added in an emailed statement to CBC that Kingston Penitentiary “remains a potential contributor to the federal government’s housing objectives” and will be reinstated in the next land bank update, though it’s not clear when that will be.
‘Potentially risky to the site’s heritage’
Housing isn’t the first idea that’s been floated for how to redevelop the site. In addition to residential towers, one previous plan also suggested a sailing school, marina and waterfront park.
Kingston councillors have been clear in recent years that they want to keep the property as is and protect its heritage value so that tourism and filming can continue.
Statistics from the city and the province’s St. Lawrence Parks Commission, which operates tours at the site, show at least 685,734 people have visited the prison since tours began there in 2016, generating tens of millions of dollars in economic activity.
A spokesperson for the city said it raised concerns when the penitentiary was added to the land bank in January 2025, describing it as “potentially risky to the site’s heritage and current uses” and arguing that there are other federally-owned locations better suited for housing.
Council quickly moved to protect the property under the Ontario Heritage Act, while the city said it’s interested in having a third party assess the Pen’s condition before finalizing any long-term agreements.
So far, however, it hasn’t been granted access to do so. The correctional service told CBC it must ensure fairness should a competitive disposal process be undertaken.
A spokesperson for the service added that it recognizes the historical significance of Kingston Penitentiary and that any future redevelopment would respect the heritage protections in place.
PSPC did not directly respond when asked by CBC why it added the penitentiary to the land bank even though local officials have shared concerns about building housing there.
For St. Onge of Canada’s Penitentiary Museum, losing even part of the prison walls would make it harder for visitors to get a sense of the “ominous feeling” of being locked up there.
“When you go through the gate to the street and you leave the compound, it seems like it’s brighter. The air is fresher,” he says.
“If the walls are taken down, it’d totally change the nature of the place.”
MP Gerretsen said he was never given an explanation for why the Pen was added to that list in the first place and that it would be “a mistake” to convert it to affordable housing.
But if that day ever comes, would he consider moving in?
“No, I wouldn’t,” he says. “Kingston Penitentiary, to me, is unique. I just don’t think I could ever come to terms with living here.”
