Kew Gardens tower jail already is a pain in the ass

 

NY Post

New York City is ramping up construction of a new jail in Queens as part of its plan to phase out problem-plagued Rikers Island — sparking outrage from residents, The Post has learned.

The presence of a lockup became more tangible for Kew Gardens locals recently when the Department of Design and Construction sent out a notice that it was restricting access to the area around Queens Borough Hall to lay the groundwork for the jail.

“We are upgrading the infrastructure in your community. These temporary access restrictions are necessary to facilitate preliminary work for the offset of a 48” Trunk Water Main for the Queens Borough Based Jail in the above-mentioned location,” the DDC said.

The community bulletin was a gut punch for many residents who said they don’t want their neighborhood to house accused criminals.

“I oppose the jail. It’s simply a safety issue,” said 31-year-old neighbor Michael Brocking.

Yan Lin, a mother of three boys ages 7 to 14, added: “We don’t need the criminal element around here.”

  don’t like the jail. We have a good community. I love this community,” the concerned mom said.

Howard Cohn, a 75-year-old retired school teacher, said, “I don’t want to be living next to criminals.”

“A jail is going to lower the property values here,” he added.

Mayor Eric Adams had promised to deliver on former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s $8.3 billion plan to shutter Rikers Island’s troubled jail complex and replace it with four smaller, more humane high-rise lockups in each of the city’s boroughs but Staten Island.

Update:

This was found at one of the borough tower jails development site in Chinatown. The DDC is being quite defiantly defensive about what they are doing.

City construction notice signs are now editorialized… pic.twitter.com/oxFPFiiEx3

— Reza Chowdhury (@RezaC1) May 16, 2022

The city is chipping away funding from Rikers Island closing.

 

THE CITY

 The city’s latest funding plan strips more than $500 million from construction of four new jails — with a building timeline that could extend two years past Mayor Bill de Blasio’s pledge to shut Rikers Island by 2026.

The capital budget commitment plan, published by the Office of Management and Budget last month, outlines $8.16 billion over 10 years for the “Borough-Based Jail” plan, which seeks to build new state-of-the-art correctional facilities in every borough except Staten Island.

That figure is down by about $520 million from $8.68 billion allocated in April.

“The city should be speeding up, not slowing down, the closure of the dysfunctional jails on Rikers,” said former Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman, who led a panel that called for the closing of Rikers.

He argued that the need to close the jailsT complex by the East River “has only grown more urgent” during the pandemic, which has “sharpened focus on racial equity.”

The city’s latest financial documents detail a timeline that wraps up two years after the original 2026 target end date.

The budget’s final construction is slated for completion in June of 2028.

That 2028 fiscal year also encompasses the previous end date of August 2027 that surfaced with a revised City Hall timeline. But the new timeline now would allow construction to carry into the 2028 calendar year.

City Council members expressing (feigning?) ambivalence about borough tower jails

NY Daily News

City Council members griped Thursday that they’re flying blind as they consider Mayor de Blasio’s plan to replace Rikers Island — which besides costing $8.7 billion would also mark a big change in the city’s approach to criminal justice.

De Blasio administration officials are offering too little information about when and how inmates would be moved from Rikers to the four new jails, in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan, said City Councilman Keith Powers (D-Manhattan), who leads the council’s Criminal Justice Committee.

“There are communities here obviously concerned about what the plans are in their district," Powers said before more than 300 people at the first City Council hearing on de Blasio’s plan.

“I think it’s a little unfair for us not to have information about what phasing will be like and what the plan will look like .... We’re here at a land use hearing to talk about this and we don’t have clarity on which of these districts will get the facilities in what order.”

“I think it’s a little unfair for us not to have information about what phasing will be like and what the plan will look like,” said Powers.

Another council member wondered why the plan’s estimated $8.7 billion cost was staying level even though de Blasio administration officials have lowered the new jails’ estimated population from 6,000 to 4,000.

“Now that the population has been reduced to 4,000, what is the updated estimated cost of construction? Is there any particular reason why that figure remains the same (now) that the population has decreased?" asked Council member Adrienne Adams (D-Brooklyn), chair of the Landmarks, Public Sitting, and Maritime Uses subcommittee

 Jamie Torres-Springer, first deputy commissioner of city Department of Design and Construction, had no answer to Adams’ question. “The estimate that informed that budget is based on the place that we’re at,” TorresSpringer said, explaining that the official design has not yet been conceptualized.

As with the tower jails building process, city council is also taking a design-build approach to voting on it.

City Council will hold hearing for four borough tower jails on the first day of school

Queens Eagle

Advocates and opponents of the city’s plan to close Rikers Island and build four new jails will pack City Hall for the council’s public hearing on the proposal Sept. 5. That’s also the first day of public school for hundreds of thousands of New York City students, and stakeholders say the hearing date could pose a big obstacle to community engagement.

The hearing will take place during a scheduled meeting of the Subcommittee on Landmarks, Public Siting and Maritime Uses. A City Council spokesperson told the Eagle that it is expected to be the only hearing on the topic. 

“Since the issue of closing Rikers and opening ‘borough-based’ jails is one of the most controversial issues of our time, I’m expecting a very crowded hearing, a very passionate hearing,” said Councilmember Adrienne Adams, the subcommittee’s chair.

“Most importantly, the people who are impacted one way or the other by the city’s jails need to be heard,” Adams continued. “I still believe the communities should have a voice in the decision.”

Some community members and activists say setting the hearing for the first day of school is the latest maneuver to reduce community input in a process that opponents have criticized for lacking transparency.

“Why would you push the calendar for that week with that schedule?” said Justin Pollock, a resident of Boerum Hill who lives near the site of the proposed 395-foot facility in Brooklyn. “It adds to the disrespect that this process has had for the general public.”

No New Jails organizer Kei Williams, a jail plan opponent, said the “monumental decision” before the council necessitates multiple public hearings on dates that are more convenient than the hectic first day of school. 

The council hearing will also take place just two days after the City Planning Commission casts its binding vote on the plan Sept. 3, the deadline established by the city’s Universal Land Use Review Procedure, or ULURP. If the CPC votes against the land-use application, it would not proceed to the council, but that is considered unlikely. 

The city’s plan calls for building a new 1,150-bed jail in every borough except Staten Island by 2026, and depends on the city’s ability to reduce the jail population to 4,000 detainees from a current total of roughly 6,500. 

The CPC can make modifications to the plan, such as permitting smaller facilities with fewer beds. That means the version that reaches the council could differ from the plan put forth by the city. But the final decisions rest with the council, meaning any changes made to the proposal by CPC could be reversed in the final stage of the land use process.

Williams said the tight time frame could make it difficult to evaluate the impact of any new changes.

“The one public hearing is scheduled … before the public will have had a chance to digest the Planning Commission's vote or comment on further changes to this ever-evolving plan that the City Council will not vote on until October,” Williams said.

Supporters of the city jail plan say community members will find a way to have their voices heard, even if the hearing date seems inconvenient. 

The only way for communities in the targeted areas for these jails can attend is to keep their kids home with a boycott of the first day of school, then show up to this hearing and disrupt this stupid plan.

City Council will vote on all four borough jails in one ULURP hearing

Brooklyn Eagle

 The community boards have voted and the borough presidents have weighed in. The city’s plan to close Rikers Island jails by 2026 — by building four new borough-based facilities via an unprecedented land-use measure — now moves to a fall vote in front of the City Council.
 
The city’s plan calls for building a new 1,150-bed jail in every borough except Staten Island. In order to do this, the proposal must go through a process called the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (or ULURP), which determines the size and use of property beyond what’s permitted by existing regulations.
 
This is far from a traditional land-use situation. For the first time, the city has packaged four different sites into a single ULURP application, rather than expose each plan to individual review. 

Local community boards and borough presidents are the first to weigh in, though their votes are purely advisory. Now that they have, the decision moves to the City Council, whose vote is legally binding.
 
The stances of the four City Council members who represent the neighborhoods in question are particularly important, because the council traditionally votes in lockstep with the local representatives on ULURP applications.

Kew Gardens, Queens

Capacity: 1,150 beds
Height: 270 feet tall
Total space: 1.258 million square feet, including a 676-space municipal parking lot
Of note: The Queens jail would house all women detained in New York City, as well as several hundred men.
Councilmember: Councilmember Karen Koslowitz supports the city’s plan, but her spokesperson said she is working with the Mayor’s Office to reduce the overall size.
Borough president: Queens Borough President Melinda Katz formally recommended disapproval in June. “A 1,500 person jail anywhere in Queens is unacceptable,” Katz said. She wants more community engagement and thinks the city can reduce its total jail population to 3,000 by 2026, enabling the city to construct a smaller community jail. (The city currently estimates a jail population of 4,000 by 2026).
Community board: Queens Community Board 9 unanimously voted in favor of a resolution rejecting the plan.

 Anyone would like to wager that "affordable housing" will be included in that building?