One Invested in the Cuckoo’s Nest

- January 25, 2006 @ 4:21 pm · Filed under Legalese

The Grand Prize of Business 2.0’s List of the 101 Dumbest Moments in Business of 2006 went to Avalon Communities for their plan to convert the shuttered Danvers State Hospital (where they perfected the pre-frontal lobotomy) into luxury condominiums.  According to one webite, it has these nicknames:

The Castle on the Hill. The Palace on the Hill. The Haunted Castle. The Witches’ Castle. The Kirkbride.

This place is so spooky, it was the set of a psychological thriller, where an asbestos abatement crew is terrorized at the abandoned hospital.

This does not appear to be an isolated case.  According to the Times developers are crazy about old asylums. 
Perhaps, I should reserve making my judgments on such projects. 
As the article points out, one such development in the Bay Area, Rivermark Village, is an experiment in new urbanism:

Julie Liedtke, who bought a three-bedroom home in the Rivermark
development for $653,000 in 2002, was not bothered that the home was
built on the grounds of a former mental hospital. She was lured by the
concept of an urban village where she could walk to the bank or an
Italian restaurant for a creamy garlic chicken pizza, her favorite.

**

Bonus: Here’s a new urban (not new urbanism) idea.

2 Comments

  1. Saheli

    January 25, 2006 @ 8:58 pm

    1

    One of the most idyllic places I’ve ever visited was a 4th grade field trip to the Las Encinas (sp.?) mental health campus in Southern California. We were there as part of Nancy Regan’s Just Say No campaign (weirdly tied in with what I later found out were Scientological manuals pawned off on my innocent teacher AND the Flintstones), but we wandered about the unrestricted part of the grounds for quite a while. We were amazed at how complete it was, and how lovely. . .a patient would never have to leave, if necessary, and somehow this only charmed us. It appealed to my inchoate yearning for self-contained community, the same piece of me that perks up at mentions of New Urbanism or contemplations of routine life abourt TNG Enterprise.

  2. ToastyKen

    January 27, 2006 @ 7:49 am

    2

    I think there’s a big difference between converting a mental hospital to condos and tearing it down and constructing new buildings. (Friend of mine lives in Rivermark, and it’s not a spooky place at all. :P)

Log in