Brooklyn residents riled over halfway house

Greenpoint’s Community Board 1 is riled over a new plan to turn a $4 million loft building at 400 Mcguinness Boulevard into a halfway house for convicted felons, according to the Brooklyn Paper. The building, which was originally slated to become a homeless shelter, was bought by hotelier Shimmie Horn, who owns Midtown’s Iroquois New York and Washington Jefferson Hotel. Horn, who also operates a Florida-based post-prison facilities company, bought out the Greenpoint building’s remaining tenants for $600,000 and just announced plans to use the property to house recently-released prison inmates. But the local community board, which recently toppled another company’s bid to use the building to house a men’s homeless shelter, said it intends to fight the proposal tooth and nail. “People [who would live there] are coming out of federal prison with offenses for murder, drugs — the big stuff,” said Community Board 1 Public Safety Committee Chairman Mieszko Kalita. “They didn’t just steal hubcaps from some car on the street.” Horn could not be reached for comment. [Brooklyn Paper]