BIG HOUSES.(The Talk of the Town)

These have been wild years for New York real estate, and with building limited, as ever, to either up or over, instead of out, condo and co-op conversions keep getting more creative. (The list includes not only warehouses, schools, and churches but also the Jehovah's Witnesses' Bible depot, the old New York Cancer Hospital, and an Ex-Lax factory.) Now developers are poised to break residential real estate's last taboo: the correctional facility. As Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz said this spring, referring to the site of the vacant House of Detention in Boerum Hill, "It would be foolish if the city does not take advantage of this super-hot real-estate market."

Markowitz may have been inspired by his neighbors across the river: the old Parkside Correctional Facility, in Harlem, is already being turned into condos. (The building will be known as 10 Mount Morris Park West.) Its developers' efforts thus far offer an early playbook for anyone interested in breaking into the correctional-conversion sector.

One: Pick the right neighborhood. Prisons aren't usually in affluent residential districts, so if the housing is to be high end (most of the Mount Morris condominiums will list for more than a million dollars) it will need to be in a neighborhood (like the Mount Morris Park Historic District) that is already being gentrified.

Two: Allow some time to pass. A healthy interval between the departure of the last inmates and the condominium offering should help avert buyer anxiety. (Parkside has been closed for seven years.)

Three: Remove any fixtures that say "penal institution." Some reminders of Parkside's past were disposed of early on. ("We were not able to keep the cage on the roof," Beyhan Karahan, the architect, said. "It was already so damaged, and we didn't know what to do with it in an upscale residency, frankly.") But, six months into construction, the prison's front door was covered with a metal grate and still said "Parkside Correctional Facility" in peeling blue letters.

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