In 1851, the San Quentin State Prison was built on a 432-acre remote peninsula on the San Francisco Bay. Today, the state’s oldest prison, home to California’s only death row for male inmates, is considered some of the area’s best real estate with dazzling views of the Bay and the San Francisco skyline. Now California Senator Jeff Denham is proposing that it be auctioned off to private developers and transformed into waterfront mansions and luxury condos. A committee hearing on the legislation, which Denham has backed for several years, is scheduled for the end of this month.

“Quite frankly, our inmates just don’t need ocean views,” Denham told ABC News. “[San Quentin is] one of the oldest and most inefficient prisons in the entire nation. We could sell this one and build four others at less expensive places in the state.” He estimates that the property, which has housed such notorious figures as Charles Manson and Robert F. Kennedy assassin Sirhan Sirhan, could fetch as much as $2 billion.

Not everyone likes Denham’s proposal, however. “We very much disagree with the idea that you can sell this property for $2 billion,” said Press Secretary for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation Seth Unger. “Furthermore, the cost to build a new prison with 5,300 beds would likely be over $2 billion, and there’s not any identified site in California that has open arms to housing the next death row.”

Then there’s the existing problem of overcrowding. Governor Schwarzenegger has already declared a state of emergency for state prisons. Unger added, “The idea that we should be discussing closing prisons in this context would not be good for public safety and it would not be good for the state of California.” Moreover, the state has sunk several million dollars into the facility recently, allocating $360 million toward a new death row. San Quentin is also scheduled to receive a new $125 million hospital this year.

Still, there’s no denying the aesthetic merits of the property. Rick Turley, president of Coldwell Banker residential brokerage in the Bay Area, said that with the prison’s “unparalleled views” and “historical element,” it is a “once-in-a-lifetime location. We’d be very excited about it, those of us in the housing industry.”