New Mega-jail at 125 White St.

Summary

The City has proposed to phase out the closing of Rikers Island Correctional Facility and to build 4 new borough-based jails in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx. The original proposed site for Manhattan was 80 Centre Street. In the middle of the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP), the long and complicated process by which land use changes get reviewed and approved in NYC, the site was changed to 125 White Street, due to the challenges of moving the municipal offices currently within 80 Centre Street.

Neighbors United Below Canal Street filed a lawsuit to stop construction of the jail, based on the construction’s environmental/health impacts and violations of the ULURP process. Initially the lawsuit was won in favor of the petitioners, but then the City successfully appealed. Demolition for construction is imminently planned for the site. Construction walls are scheduled to go up first week of March.

T!C’s mOST RECENT LETTER TO THE MAYOR

To Mayor Adams:

Since the borough-based jail plan was first proposed in 2019, Think!Chinatown has advocated for the City to listen to our community members and neighbors. When there was a lack of outreach from the City, we created bi-lingual flyers to communicate former Mayor de Blasio’s proposed plan, letting our neighbors know when and how to voice their opinions. We hosted a workshop so that we could learn as a community how the ULURP process works. For years, we attended countless meetings, both public and as a part of the Neighborhood Advisory Committee, spending many hours trying to engage with the City. We have done everything the City has asked of us and more, and yet the de Blasio administration just did not listen.

When you ran for Mayor, we were heartened to hear you say, just last year, “No New Jails. No New Buildings” in Chinatown, and that you “know it is possible to solve the problems we are facing in incarceration without the destruction of communities.” Think!Chinatown supports Neighbors United Below Canal (NUBC) in opposing the $8.3 billion borough-based jails to replace Rikers Island. SEE FULL LETTER HERE (thank you to the Grand Street Democrats for lending their talking points)

T!C’s Written Testimony before the Public Design Commission of the City of New York — April 11, 2022

The plan to remove public art and de-map White Streetis alarming, especially when the White Street plaza was intended to be a community give back when the City builtthe existing jails in the 1980s. Correction Officers have since taken over the public space once promised to the community to become their own parking lot. Building over this plaza is another example of the City’s disregard for our community. At Neighborhood Advisory Committee meetings led by various city departments and offices, the decommissioning of White Street has been presented with a problematic narrative: the new plan will"create a car free zone"(meaning the tunnel). In fact White Street between Centre and Baxter has already been designated as a car-free pedestrian zone as a community concession with the building of the current jail as part of the Percent For Art project. The scope of the art commission includes the paving depicting the Chinese characters for upright and righteousness, the mesh wire columns, and even tree designations by Chinese American artist Kit-Yin Snyder. By painting lines over the pavement to create parking lot spaces, DoC had defaced the artwork and dispossessed the community of this plaza. Architectural Historian Kerri Culhane looked into the history of the site and could not find any paperwork for land use change from pedestrian space to parking lot. It should be the responsibility of DoC to produce paperwork for land-use change before moving forward. SEE FULL LETTER HERE

Resources and Community partners:

ULURP Action Guide

T!C created a bilingual Chinese/English ULURP process guide specific to the Chinatown site. This document was distributed freely to all Chinatown organizations and local media. Thank you to Chung Pak LDC for sponsoring the production of the action guide.

Community Board Resolutions

Community Boards 1 and 3 have made their advisory statements. Read their resolutions.

Neighborhood Advisory Councils

Each site held a series of closed door meetings with respective Neighborhood Advisory Councils, a group of community leaders handpicked by the Council Member.

Draft Environmental Impact Statement

View the DEIS for all 4 sites.

Neighbors United Below Canal

A great resource for information about this project. NUBC represents thousands of stakeholders in the diverse and unique communities of Lower Manhattan. NUBC comprises residents, organizations, businesses, community activists, and elected officials.

JustLeadershipUSA

JustLeadershipUSA is dedicated to cutting the US correctional population in #halfby2030. JLUSA empowers people most affected by incarceration to drive policy reform.

Center for Urban Pedagogy

Check out CUP’s toolkit to learn more about the ULURP.