City Council Member Urges Restoration, Rather Than Replacement, of Manhattan Detention Complex
City Council member Christopher Marte is sponsoring a resolution that, if enacted, will pressure the administration of Mayor Eric Adams to consider pausing the plan to demolish the Manhattan Detention Complex (MDC) in Chinatown, and rebuild it as the world’s tallest correctional facility.
This controversial project is part of the larger “borough-based jail” program, launched in 2017 under then-Mayor Bill de Blasio, who committed to closing the scandal-plagued Rikers Island (the City’s centralized detention facility) within a decade, and replacing it with four new jails—one in each borough except Staten Island.
Among Lower Manhattan residents, the plan to demolish and rebuild MDC has become a flashpoint, largely because of the environmental and health hazards that years of demolition and construction could impose on the surrounding community.
In lieu of this plan, Mr. Marte is proposing “adaptive reuse” of the existing building, which would bring it up to current laws, codes, and standards in less time than a new structure could be built, and at a fraction of the cost.
“If you look at the number of beds this site can hold, compared to the new site,” he explained at a February 17 press conference, “there isn’t a difference. We believe it is financially and environmentally infeasible to move ahead with the current project.”
“The way forward,” he continued, “is to have a humane facility for the people who will be incarcerated there, and to respect the surrounding community. There’s too much to risk when we have an opportunity that is a win for everybody—the administration, the community, and the people who will be placed there.”
Jan Lee, a Chinatown community leader who is also a co-founder of Neighbors United Below Canal, a grassroots group that opposes the MDC demolition plan, added, “adaptive reuse prioritizes the lives of the people at Rikers now, and will solve the problem of getting people to safety faster for less money and with less disruption to our community.”
Mr. Marte added that the planned new facility is so much larger that, “our fear is that if they build it, they will fill it. The envelope is so big that they could do whatever they want.”
Critics of the MDC replacement plan, which is officially priced at $9 billion (but skeptics predict will likely cost many billions more), envision years of harmful environmental impacts from demolition and construction, followed by decades of crowding on local streets as thousands of staff and support personnel report to the new facility each day.
Mr. Marte proposed last year to convert the existing MDC into a jail for woman, noting in a letter to Mayor Adams that the majority of the 300 women imprisoned at Rikers Island are domestic violence survivors, and arguing that the City’s provisional plan (to integrate these women into a planned facility for male and female prisoners in Queens) “has raised serious concerns among elected officials and activists,” and sparked calls for a strategy to move the women to another all-female facility.
Chinatown activists feel betrayed by City Hall, because then-candidate Eric Adams attended one of their rallies in fall of 2021, and said, “I know how much this community has endured. Let’s stop the institutionalization of hate that we are seeing in government. We can do a better job. The problems we are facing can’t be solved with incarceration and the destruction of communities. So I am here with you, standing side by side. No new jail! No building up a jail at this location!”
A spokesman for the Mayor’s office responded, “this administration will always follow the law, and the law says the jails on Rikers Island must close on time. To follow the law and protect the safety of the community and all involved in this project, this work is proceeding. We have engaged deeply with the community every step of the way, and we are committed to continuing to work with them to limit the disruption of this project.”