The Standish prison that was almost the home for Guantanamo's detainees

For a few strange weeks in the fall of 2009, this small Lake Huron town near the mouth of Saginaw Bay was at the center of a national fight about where to put the prisoners of Guantanamo Bay.

The Standish Maximum Correctional Facility opened in 1990 on the edge of town, a cluster of low concrete housing units behind razor wire. For nearly two decades it was the biggest employer around — roughly 340 jobs in a town where, by 2009, the unemployment rate had climbed to about 17 percent. So when the state announced it would close the prison to save money, the loss hit hard.

Then came an idea that split the town down the middle. The Obama administration was hunting for a stateside prison to take the men held at the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Standish, with an empty maximum-security prison and a desperate need for paychecks, raised its hand. Town leaders openly courted the deal; the federal Bureau of Prisons sent people to walk the cellblocks. For a moment a tiny Michigan town and a global controversy were tied together.

It didn’t happen. Resistance built fast — from some Standish residents who didn’t want the men in their backyard, and from Michigan’s own leaders, including the governor and both U.S. senators. By late October the plan had collapsed, and the detainees never came. On Halloween of 2009 the prison closed anyway, jobs and all.

It still stands today, fenced and silent on the south side of town, too solid to knock down and too specialized to easily reuse. Lawmakers have floated bill after bill to sell it or repurpose it. For now it sits there — a maximum-security ghost that once, briefly, had the whole country arguing over a place most people couldn’t find on a map.