Manhattan Detention Complex Would Triple In Size Under Plan

FINANCIAL DISTRICT, NY — The Manhattan Detention Center will triple in size to a whopping 1.5 million square feet as part of the city's plan to shutter Rikers Island, according to the Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice.

City officials had planed to build a high-rise jail at 80 Centre St. when the Mayor's office suddenly announced in November that it is nixing the controversial plan in favor of expanding the existing Manhattan Detention Complex, commonly referred to as "The Tombs," at 125 White St.

The de Blasio administration initially planned to raze and reconstruct The Tombs as part of the city's borough-based jail plan, which aims to shutter Rikers Island by 2027 and switch to new detention centers in every borough except for Staten Island.

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For more than a year, local leaders believed Manhattan's borough-based jail would be a souped-up version of The Tombs and were stunned when the city announced it was shifting its gaze to 80 Centre St.

But now that the plan has reverted to The Tombs, officials are grappling with some of the challenges that originally gave them pause at the 125 White St. site — such as tripling the complex's size and rebuilding it to a staggering 50 stories or more to meet the new facility's needs.

"Our maximum envelope at this point is about 520 feet — and that was part of the initial consideration of saying this is a building that would be taller than what we think is optimal, certainly," said Dana Kaplan, the deputy director of the Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice, at a Tuesday Community Board 1 land use committee meeting.

"We believe that we can do some additional work in terms of reducing the size of the program as we move forward. And so, that is something we are committed to working on."

The city plans to demolish the existing complex and build a new facility up to 520 feet that would house 1,500 inmates, for a total of 6,000 prison beds across all four borough-based jails. Each jail will include space for educational programming, recreation and therapeutic services for inmates, in addition to publicly accessible community space.

There will not be a new scoping period or hearing to gather comments on the new site because 125 White St. is "so close to the original proposed location," said Kaplan.

But the city is assembling a Neighborhood Advisory Council, or NAC, made up of local leaders, criminal justice groups and service providers to offer suggestions for the facility throughout the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure, or ULURP, that will culminate in a City Council vote.

Officials still aim to devote 20,000 square feet of the project to the community, but housing is now off the table. In fact, the potential to develop housing in addition to a jail was a key reason why the 80 Centre St. site was initially seen as a more viable alternative to revamping The Tombs, explained Kaplan.

"In terms of why we thought that 80 Centre St. would have been a better site was because when we initially looked at it we were contemplating if we were to build an entire detention center at 80 Centre St. that we could use one side of 124-125 White St. to replace the [Manhattan District Attorney's] office and then one side could be obviously some type of community development opportunity such as housing," said Kaplan.

"Now, that is not possible in terms of the current site."

The 80 Centre St. building houses the city's Marriage Bureau and offices with the Manhattan District Attorney, among other agencies, that would have been relocated. But the city scraped the plan after determining it would be too costly and complicated to find the agencies new homes.

Beyond the 20,000 square feet of ground-floor space devoted to locals, the city is working to identify additional "community development opportunities" to merge into the project. The new-and-improved Manhattan Detention Complex will also boast at least 100 underground parking spaces for Department of Corrections staff — but that's still not enough to serve all of the jail's employees.

Architecture firm Perkins Eastman is developing a conceptual floor plan for the new facility, though the borough-based jails will be designed and constructed using a "design-build" system.

Instead of having separate design and contractor teams, the design-build method mixes architects and engineers to help the project smoothly evolve as it is constructed, according to a representative with the office of the Deputy Mayor of Operations.

"There is one entity that is responsible and has the knowledge of how the buildings would be architecturally and functionally and then another one actually in the same company would be implementing that plan," said Lindsey Shields, a policy advisor with the Deputy Mayor of Operations' office.

"So there’s a lot of efficiencies by doing it this way because the architect and the contractor can work together to solve problems."

Some 700 inmates who currently reside in The Tombs will be temporarily relocated to Rikers Island during the construction, along with inmates from the Brooklyn House of Detention in Boerum Hill.

"The City is still developing a phasing plan for the demolition of existing borough facilities in Manhattan and Brooklyn ... This could mean utilizing existing capacity outside of these facilities, including potentially on Rikers Island," Alacia Lauer, a spokeswoman with the Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice, told Patch.

"As the number of people in jail continues its decline, we can continue to minimize the overall numbers of detention, including on Rikers Island, while moving toward closing the jails on Rikers Island on the fastest timeline possible."

The site switch-up will delay the ULURP process by some three months. Instead of releasing the Draft Environmental Impact Statement for all four jails in December, the city aims to publish it in March, 2019 and have it certified by March 25.

That will officially kick off the ULURP process and give Community Board 1 60 days to review the assessment before the plan continues on to Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer's office for review.

A view of the 19-story Manhattan Detention Complex from Centre Street in Lower Manhattan. (Photo courtesy of Caroline Spivack/Patch)