{"id":333954,"date":"2026-08-31T16:54:08","date_gmt":"2026-08-31T16:54:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/333954\/"},"modified":"2026-08-31T16:54:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-31T16:54:08","slug":"fury-at-chinatown-jail-locals-warn-of-danger-city-set-to-build","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/333954\/","title":{"rendered":"Fury at Chinatown Jail: Locals Warn of Danger, City Set to Build"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

With local fury over the Chinatown jail still sky high even as the city prepares to build the controversial 16-story jail<\/a> at 214 and 215 White St., a coalition of neighborhood groups issued a public letter warning Mayor Zohran Mamdani, City Council Speaker Julie Menin, \u201cClose Rikers Czar\u201d Dana Kaplan and Deputy Mayor Julia Kerson of the project\u2019s potential construction perils.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe buildings in the danger zone are our homes, our small businesses, the historic buildings along Baxter Street, and Chung Pak senior housing, where some of our most vulnerable neighbors live,\u201d the letter asserts, urging the city to pause the project.<\/p>\n

When complete, the new White Street slammer will replace The Tombs, formally the Manhattan Detention Center and, from 2001-2006, the Bernard B. Kerik Complex. It will also be Manhattan\u2019s contribution to the much disputed \u201cBorough-based Jail Program,\u201d which was approved by the City Council in 2019 with the goal of closing Rikers Island by August 31, 2027. This goal will not come close to being achieved.<\/p>\n

The ways in which this letter differs from the many past protests over what some have called the Chinatown \u201cjailscraper\u201d are subtle but significant. Likewise the 18 organizations that signed the letter, ranging from original jail opponents like Neighbors United Below Canal<\/a>, to groups who\u2019ve been accused of supporting the pokey and selling out the community in exchange for other, especially financial, considerations from the city.<\/p>\n

In February 2024, Straus News reported on raucous protests against the Museum of Chinese in America<\/a> (MOCA) over this and other issues. Now MOCA is a signatory to the protest letter, as is the Chinese-American Planning Council (CPAC), another organization anti-jail activists have accused of supporting the project to curry municipal favor.<\/p>\n

The following month, when it appeared the dismantling of the old, 14-story Tombs caused cracks<\/a> at the neighboring Chung Pak <\/a>senior housing complex on Baxter Street, Council Member Christopher Marte, Assemblymember Grace Lee and State Sentator Brian Kavanagh were there, calling for a stop to the project. \u201cIs the city prioritizing a $100 million plus demolition project, or is it for the community,\u201d Marte asked pointedly. \u201cEspecially the seniors that live right next to it?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have lost trust in this process. We have been having these conversations with the city for a very long time. We\u2019ve been talking about what is necessary to accommodate the senior center next to the jail. And these conversations are not working,\u201d said Lee. At that same time, many of the current protest letter\u2019s 18 signatories were absent.<\/p>\n

A Sinking Feeling<\/p>\n

What changed? The immediate impetus for the new letter was a July 12, 2026, Daily News opinion piece by William Bialowsky, a senior principal of Bialosky New York Architects<\/a> in SoHo. Bialowsky himself was compelled to write after reading a city-commissioned report about the White Street jail site produced by Langan, an engineering and environmental consulting firm headquartered at 21 Penn Plaza. In short\u2014which the highly detailed 558-page is not\u2014Bialowsky has serious concerns about the geology of White Street. In his own words:<\/p>\n

\u201cAs an architect who has practiced in Lower Manhattan for more than 35 years and worked on many complex foundation projects, I was alarmed when I read the Langan report. I was more alarmed that it has received almost no public attention.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Manhattan jail sits directly in the historic footprint of the Collect Pond, Lower Manhattan\u2019s first fresh water source, later filled with whatever was at hand. Beneath the site lie layers of fill, organic pond mud (44.5% moisture content), soft clay, sand and gravel, with bedrock 100 feet down.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe original Tombs of 1838 was so structurally unstable,\u201d Bialowsky continues, \u201cthat it was demolished. The 80 Centre St. office building one block south halted construction in 1928 when crews hit the swampy remnants of the Collect Pond, forcing a foundation redesign.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Manhattan Detention of 1939,<\/a> the building demolished to make way for the proposed jail, ran into the same trouble: contractor litigation, delays, and a foundation of hundreds of caissons to bedrock, with continuous pumping for 87 years. Three previous attempts. Three foundation crises. Now the city is preparing the fourth, deeper than any of the previous three.<\/p>\n

Contemporary engineering has not resolved these old risks, and the report does not pretend otherwise.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the coalition letter leads with a reference to the Pfizer building beam buckling this past July, this was gilding the lily for those with short memories\u2014or perhaps no memory at all\u2014 that \u201cThe jail site sits on the soft, waterlogged ground of the old Collect Pond.\u201d<\/p>\n

Zohran Inherits a Plan<\/p>\n

The second key factor is that Zohran Mamdani is now in office, inheriting an idea launched by Mayor Bill De Blasio in 2017 and approved by the City Council in October 2019. At that time, all 10 Manhattan Council Members voted in favor of the \u201cBorough Based Jail Plan.\u201d A New York Times article preceding the vote was headlined: \u201c4 Jails in 5 Boroughs: The $8.7 Billion Puzzle Over How to Close Rikers.<\/a>\u201d Today that price tag seems like a bargain, or fantasy, as the latest cost estimate is $16 billion<\/a> and, if that number soars yet higher, few people will be surprised.<\/p>\n

Of Manhattan\u2019s ten Council Members\u2014 all of whom voted yes on the project\u2014 two remain in elected office: Comptroller Mark Levine and Assemblymember Keith Powers. Former District 8 Council Member Diana Ayala, who defeated Assemblymember Eddie Gibbs in the June Democratic primary, is near certain to join Powers in Albany in 2027. As for District 1 Council Member Margaret Chin, in whose district the new lockup would be built, she moved to California after she was term-limited out of office in 2021.<\/p>\n

Chin\u2019s successor Christopher Marte\u2014who only narrowly lost his bid to unseat Chin in 2017\u2014was a staunch opponent of the project since its announcement, and remains so. In 2019, Marte was a co-founder of the anti-Chinatown Jail Neighbors United Below Canal<\/a>. While Marte and others favored a substantial renovation of the old Tombs, other opponents of the borough-based jail program split right and further left, the former feeling Rikers Island reforms were sufficient, the latter opposed to any construction that furthers the so-called \u201ccarceral state.\u201d<\/p>\n

For its part, the Mamdani administration seems unfazed by either past protests or the current letter about the Chinatown jail, with the city\u2019s Department of Design and Construction and contractor Tutor Perini<\/a> releasing a report that says, in essence, they have everything under control and a gleaming new Tombs with ground floor retail<\/a> will open in 2032.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, work on Brooklyn\u2019s 15-story borough-based jail\u2014replacing the old Brooklyn House of Detention at 275 Atlantic Ave. in Boerum Hill\u2014continues apace, on a site much easier to build upon, with a projected opening date of 2029.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With local fury over the Chinatown jail still sky high even as the city prepares to build the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":333955,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[125554,75,84,83,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-333954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-fury","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=333954"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333954\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/333955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=333954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=333954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=333954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}