The public will get another look inside the walls of the closed Kingston Penitentiary this summer.

Staring in late June and running until Oct. 29, tours of the legendary prison will be offered to the public.

The tours are the result of a partnership of the City of Kingston, Correctional Service Canada and the St. Lawrence Parks Commission.

“I think it’s fair to say that given the interest in the tours the first time after the pen closed, there’s been a lot of questions in the community if we would be able to do this again,” Kingston Mayor Bryan Paterson said.

“It’s definitely been top of mind for me.”

In 2013, only three days after the prison closed, three weeks of tours of the prison began and raised $150,000 for the United Way of Kingston, Frontenac, Lennox and Addington.

Later that same year, Habitat for Humanity Canada also raised $150,000 with 15 days of tours.

Net proceeds from this summer’s tours are to support tourism initiatives and youth programming from the United Way of KFLA.

Paterson said restarting the pen tours has been on the discussion table since he took office in 2014, but it wasn’t until local tourism agencies began pushing for the tours that things moved along.

Kingston and the Islands MPP Sophie Kiwala said the tours are a “massive tourism opportunity for Kingston” and said the project was the “most relevant and significant tourism announcement in Canada.”

“This is a very, very important day,” she said.

The summer tours are to be organized and operated by the Fort Henry staff from the St. Lawrence Parks Commission.

“The prospect for this facility, notwithstanding the visioning exercise that needs to take place, I’m a tourism guy and I think people would come from all over the world to see this Alcatraz of the North,” said Darren Dalgleish, general manager and chief executive officer of the St. Lawrence Parks Commission.

Dalgleish said the tours will create 30 summer student jobs and are expected to boost Kingston’s tourism economy by at least $6 million, including money spent by visitors on accommodation, food and fuel.

This year, the city and the Crown corporation Canada Lands Company are to lead a project to determine the long-term future for the Kingston Penitentiary site and the adjacent Portsmouth Olympic Harbour.

A tourism role for the site will likely be one of the suggestions.

“Tourism and heritage is what Kingston is known for,” Dalgleish said.

“One of the advantages of opening the doors to a place like Kingston Pen is not only to tell the story of the history of the facility itself and its relationship to Kingston, but also to give people an insight as to kinds of conditions people had to live in as well as work in,” said Don Head, commissioner of Correctional Service Canada.

Kingston and the Islands MP Mark Gerretsen credited Paterson’s office and the Kingston Accommodation Partners, an organization of local hotels and inns, for spearheading the push to get the tours restarted.

“I thought to myself, as I’m sure Sophie and Bryan did, ‘Oh God, three levels of government, this is going to be so hard to get everybody to work together.’ But it was really reassuring and such a positive vibe to see everybody come together to make it happen.”

Gerretsen said the popularity of the first rounds of tours, if repeated this summer, will illustrate the ongoing interest there is the pen.

“I think what is going to happen here this summer is going to help to showcase how much people want to see this property,” Gerretsen said. “I grew up three blocks from here and walked by this property many times and never understood what was on the other side of the walls.

“This place is just as interesting to locals as to people visiting Kingston.”

elferguson@postmedia.com