Queens Groups Sue NYC Over Kew Gardens Jail Plan

KEW GARDENS, QUEENS — Two Queens-based community groups filed suit against the city over the city's decision to approve building a new jail in Kew Gardens, part of a $9 billion plan to replace the detention facilities on Rikers Island with a new jail in every borough but Staten Island.

The petition, filed Tuesday in New York Supreme Court by Queens Residents United and the Community Preservation Coalition, argues that the city's jail plan willfully disregarded and actively circumvented the rules governing the land-use review process.

"In Queens and throughout the City, the government relied on fanciful assumptions, cut corners, broke rules, and short-circuited processes designed to inform City residents and give them a voice in shaping their own communities," the petition says.

"City officials, including Mayor Bill de Blasio and Council Speaker Corey Johnson, bragged about cutting corners, as if the City did a good thing by failing to engage its public as the law said it must have done."

At the heart of the lawsuit is the city's decision to speed up the review process by lumping the four jail proposals into a single land-use application, referred to as a "Frankenstein-stitched, one-size-fits all proposal."

The City Council approved the combined four-jail proposal in October.

The petition also claims the city mishandled the environmental review process, which is meant to assess a project's potential impact on the surrounding community.

A similar argument prompted a state judge to overturn a controversial Inwood rezoning proposal at the end of last year.

Queens Residents United and the Community Preservation Coalition's lawsuit represents a last-ditch effort to stop a new jail from going up in their neighborhood and get the mayor's office to return to the drawing board.

Residents of The Bronx and Manhattan are also suing the city over the borough-based jail plan.

Read the full petition here: