After years of delays and cost overruns, the city plans to finally open part of a quarter-billion dollar unit at Bellevue Hospital for seriously ill detainees on Rikers Island, THE CITY has learned.
The Mamdani administration also plans to close the North Infirmary Command, the original Rikers Island hospital constructed in 1932, according to multiple sources briefed on the plan. The facility has been used to house high-profile detainees like disgraced movie producer Harvey Weinstein.
Some 314 detainees were in NIC as of March 10, the last publicly available count. An estimated 25 will be transferred to the new unit on Bellevue’s second floor. The others will be transferred to different locations on Rikers, according to jail insiders.
The 104-bed Department of Correction unit has nearly doubled in cost and is years behind schedule, with its price tag climbing from $130 million to $241 million, according to Correctional Health Services, the NYC Health + Hospitals division that provides care to detainees.
Chaplain Dr. Victoria A. Phillips joins a rally outside Rikers Island, Aug. 28, 2025. Credit: Alex Krales/THE CITY
That works out to just over $2 million per bed — including recreation space — spread across much of the historic hospital’s second floor.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani plans to hold a press conference Tuesday morning at Bellevue announcing the long-awaited partial opening of the new unit.
“It’s going to open in phases,” said a source familiar with the plan. The first phase is expected to be just around 25 beds, the source said.
At least one veteran clinician working in the jail system said the shortage of space at Bellevue raises the risk that patients with significant medical needs will be housed in general population units on Rikers, where they are often more vulnerable to other detainees and poor medical care.
“Health care providers are scrambling to find beds,” the clinician told THE CITY.
The Corrections Department designated “structurally restrictive areas” in the North Infirmary Command on Rikers Island as a replacement for solitary confinement. Credit: Courtesy of Board of Correction
Jeanette Merrill, a spokesperson for Correctional Health Services, did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Bellevue already has a jail ward on the hospital’s 19th floor where some 60 detainees were housed last month.
First unveiled in 2019 with a planned 2022 opening, the project fell years behind schedule and has now spanned three mayoral administrations. Construction records indicate the delays were driven in part by repeated requests from jail officials to modify the design to better protect correction officers.
Last year, former Corrections Commissioner Lynelle Maginley-Liddie pointed to a separate obstacle, saying the project had yet to receive approval from the New York State Commission of Correction, the state’s jail oversight body.
The commission has refused to disclose what outstanding issues remain.
The Bellevue Hospital jail ward was supposed to open in 2022. Credit: Photos Courtesy of NYC Health +
Behind the scenes, city jail officials during the Adams administration also said they would need to hire at least 200 new officers to staff the specialized site, THE CITY reported last summer.
The Mamdani administration came up with a solution: move staff from infirmary on Rikers Island to the Bellevue unit, jail insiders said.
City Hall officials have repeatedly tried to shutter some of the 10 jail facilities on Rikers Island ahead of the broader plan to close the complex. But those efforts have repeatedly stalled as the jail population has climbed since the pandemic.
There were 6,797 people in custody as of March 10, up from just under 4,000 in 2020, according to jail records.
In 2022, officials in the Adams administration said they would immediately close the Otis Bantum Correctional Facility, which housed 1,410 detainees last month.
Inside the $241 million Bellevue Hospital jail ward. Credit: Photos Courtesy of NYC Health +
Similarly, de Blasio administration officials announced plans in 2019 to shutter the Eric M. Taylor Center, where 1,397 people were being held last month, records show.
Officials in the Mamdani administration are expected to frame the infirmary’s closure as permanent, since the facility will be decommissioned with the state Commission of Correction, a move that would complicate any attempt to bring it back online.
In recent years, the infirmary was where jail officials “disappeared” detainees who repeatedly act out, according to advocates.
“It was like a pseudo- solitary area,” a jail source said, noting that the facility had many empty spots where high-profile detainees could be “stashed” for months.
Victor Pate, co-director of the HALT Solitary campaign and a former Rikers detainee, said he welcomed the opening of the Bellevue unit as “an important step” in getting medically vulnerable people out of “deplorable conditions,” while calling NIC “one of the most extreme sites of isolation” in the jail system.
Security cameras kept watch at Rikers Island, Dec. 8, 2024. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
He added the city must still go further to end solitary confinement and close Rikers entirely.
NIC was the site of a major fire three years ago.
A 2023 investigation by the New York City Board of Correction found widespread lapses in fire safety protocols during the blaze, which broke out on April 6, 2023, inside a restrictive housing unit.
Board officials said the incident highlighted systemic failures in staffing, oversight and emergency response inside the aging facility.
Bellevue is not the only Rikers-linked hospital project plagued by delays and rising costs, city records show.
More massive overruns
A plan to build 144 DOC-designated beds at Woodhull Hospital in Brooklyn has ballooned from $239 million to $381 million and counting, according to Correctional Health Services. The unit, initially slated to open in 2023, is now expected to be completed in 2028.
At North Central Bronx Hospital, a proposed 92-bed detention unit has seen its budget grow from $240 million to $288 million, CHS records show. That project, once scheduled for completion in 2024, is also now projected to open in 2028.
One local elected official was thrilled by the news of the Bellevue unit finally opening.
“I had not heard this news. That’s freaking amazing!” Brooklyn City Council member Lincoln Restler, who has pushed to open the unit, told THE CITY.
“It’s disgraceful there have been so many years of delays,” he said, “but I’m thankful the Mamdani administration is finally moving forward.”
Related