What The City Promised Kew Gardens For Koslowitz's Jail Vote

KEW GARDENS, QUEENS — A new community center. More public parking spaces. Eight additional cops. Security cameras.

These are among the dozen requests City Council Member Karen Koslowitz made of City Hall as a condition of her vote Thursday in favor of Mayor Bill de Blasio's hotly-contested plan to build a new jail in every borough but Staten Island by 2026.

The City Council approved the plan by a vote of 36-13.

Koslowitz, who represents the Queens neighborhood where one of the four new jails would rise, pressed city officials to reduce the size of the Kew Gardens jail and commit to providing a slew of other community investments.

"I would not have supported this proposal if I believed that it would have a negative impact on the community that I love," Koslowitz said in a statement after the vote.

"I've represented this community for over two decades, and have lived in it for over half a century, and I could never in conscious harm my neighbors. I passionately believe that we took a historic step today to create a more just and humane criminal justice system in New York City."

The final list of deal sweeteners includes:

• About 150 additional parking spaces inside the detention center for jail staff and authorized service providers
• Air quality and noise monitoring by the Department of Design and Construction to "limit community impacts" during construction
• Traffic control measures during construction, if necessary
• A promise to protect existing street trees during construction
• A hydraulic analysis to determine whether the existing sewer system will be able to handle an increase in wastewater flow, and a potential upgrade to the existing sewer system depending on the result of that analysis
• 25,000 square feet of community space in the detention center
• Upgrades to the kitchen at Queens Community House's Kew Gardens senior center
• Eight additional police officers for the NYPD's 102nd Precinct, which covers Kew Gardens
• Renovations to P.S. 99's gym, auditorium and schoolyard
• Outdoor security cameras for P.S. 99 and P.S. 139
• A lighting upgrade in the Austin Street underpass beneath Union Turnpike and the Jackie Robinson Parkway

The Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice also agreed to shrink the detention center from 27 to 19 stories, though it would still be the largest of the four new city jails in terms of square footage. The number of beds for detainees went from 1,437 to 886.

Koslowitz had previously succeeded in getting officials to nix plans for an infirmary in the Kew Gardens jail that would serve all four new detention centers.

"This agreement permits her to lend her support to a historic revision of our city’s jail system," Koslowitz's spokesperson, Michael Cohen, wrote in an email Thursday.

In a private meeting this spring to discuss the jail, de Blasio promised Kew Gardens residents they would get something in return for shouldering the "burden" of a new jail, as he called it.

"When we ask a community to do something for the whole city, which is what we're doing here, then the community has a right to say, here are things that would help our community, including things we've been trying to get for a long time and haven't gotten," de Blasio said, according to a recording of the March 27 meeting reviewed by Patch.

"How can we say to the community, we're asking you to shoulder a burden but we want to do something back that's really going to make a difference?" de Blasio added.

At the time, the mayor didn't provide specific examples. Negotiations between Koslowitz's office and the mayor's office continued until the City Council voted Thursday on the land-use plan that bundled all four jails.

A City Hall spokesperson previously told the Patch that the mayor's office pledged to invest in the communities where the four new jails would rise and that suggesting "anything untoward or transactional is, at best, an irresponsible misrepresentation."

Koslowitz's vote was critical to the passage of the plan, because members of the City Council tend to vote in lockstep with those whose districts are affected by a given land-use plan.

"This is the hardest vote I have taken in my entire career," Koslowitz said during a press conference Thursday. "But you know what? I go to sleep at night and I sleep very well. The people who say no have no solutions. They just say no."

Patch editor Noah Manskar contributed reporting.