Lower Manhattan Jail Plan Should Be Pulled, Say Pols

FINANCIAL DISTRICT, NY — The city must withdraw its plans for the high-rise prison slated for 80 Centre street and engage the community in a more inclusive review process before submitting revised plans, according to a group of elected officials.

As part of the de Blasio administration's plan to shutter Rikers Island by 2027 the city aims to erect a jail that could rise up to 40 stories on the site of the city's Marriage Bureau in Lower Manhattan.

The proposal is among four new prisons slated for each borough, except for Staten Island, to transform the city's detention system, but has faced intense criticism after the Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice stunned local leaders and residents with the announcement that it planned to build Manhattan's new facility at 80 Centre Street instead of expanding Downtown's existing jail — the Manhattan Detention Center, commonly referred to as "The Tombs," at 125 White Street.

"[We] believe that the City has fallen short of its obligation to engage the Lower Manhattan community in a transparent and inclusive conversation about the site selection process," reads a recent letter addressed to Mayor Bill de Blasio penned by Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer and Councilwoman Margret Chin, whose district includes the proposed site.

"To that end, we are asking for a reset of the scoping process to consider fully all possible sites."

An additional trio of politicians — Assemblywoman Yuh-line Niou, State Senator Brian Kavanagh and Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez — slammed the plan and how the city has approached the review process in a separate letter to the Mayor.

"The process does not provide a forum for considering the soundness of the underlying proposal or more desirable alternatives that may be available," reads the recent letter from the three elected officials.

"Thus, the City’s public engagement on this proposal has begun in earnest only after virtually all of the major decisions have been made about the location, number, and scale of the facilities."

Officials note that at a series of meetings convened by Brewer's office — prior to the Aug. 17 announcement of the 80 Centre Street proposal — that the Mayor's office made no mention that it was considering sites aside from The Tombs.

The de Blasio administration also agreed to host community forums on the project this Spring, but those public meetings never happened, the pols charge.

City officials have met with locals at a trio of public forums since the project's summer announcement — one of which was a town hall that occurred at the urging of Chin and Brewer.

In fact, Neighbors United Below Canal, a coalition of Lower Manhattan residents, businesses and organizations against the plan, took it upon themselves to fill what they say is a gap in the city's community engagement on the plan by hosting their own forum to educate locals.

The Draft Scope of Work for all four facilities was released in August and the building plans remain in the early stages. The public comment period on the draft proposal drew to a close on Oct. 29.

The city has promised that "the process of engagement will be much more robust than the traditional public review," according to Patrick Gallahue, a spokesman with the Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice. But the land use review process has also become a bone of contention for legislators who say "the particular needs of each community are discounted" by merging all four prison plans into a single, massive application instead of reviewing each separately.

The city's 80 Centre Street proposal seeks to convert the building, which occupies and entire city block, into a high-rise detention center to house up to 1,510 inmates. It would be a major expansion that could see the building rise up to 430 feet, and grow from a 640,000-square-foot complex to 1.56 million square feet.

Under the plan, each jail is expected to include space for educational programming, recreation and therapeutic services for inmates. Each complex will also come with publicly accessible community space and parking. The north tower of The Tombs would also be set aside as a community benefit, potentially for affordable housing, senior housing or retail space.

City officials are reviewing New Yorker's input on the project before the administration likely submits the final Scope of Work document and then issues the Draft Environmental Impact Statement — this will officially kick off the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure.

But Lower Manhattan pols hope the city will take locals concerns heart and pull the plan for revisions before the process goes any further.

"We believe that withdrawing the Draft Scope of Work, re-starting the conversation, and producing a revised scope is the best way for the City to move toward the profoundly important objectives of reforming the justice system," Niou, Kavanagh and Velazquez's letter states.

"The need to achieve these goals is nothing short of a moral imperative."

A conceptual design of the new jail proposed for 80 Centre Street in Lower Manhattan. (Image courtesy of Mayor Bill de Blasio's Office)