The reality of San Quentin officially becoming a rehabilitation center has been unfolding before the eyes of prisoners, staff, volunteers, and visitors at the 173-year-old institution. 

On some mornings, Robert Tyler stands outside a trailer where The Last Mile is temporarily situated. It’s where he works as teaching assistant in TLM’s coding program. He watches free men at work, constructing the new Scandinavian-style rehabilitation center. It is where the now demolished Building 38, his former job site, once stood. 

“I love watching the construction take place,” said Tyler. Soon, he and others will return to the place where TLM’s coding and audio-video production courses were birthed. 

Concrete poured, cranes lifting, scaffolds raised, and the sounds of a construction site will soon come to an end on San Quentin’s Lower Yard. 

At different stages in the new building’s development, people have walked past a chain link fence, cloaked with a green tarp. They have witnessed another form of rehabilitation in the making.

Recently the walls of the new building’s brick façade went up, with prefabricated windows in full view, facing the Lower Yard. Construction is scheduled to finish in January 2026, according to CDCR officials.