Community's Plea to Mayor: 'Pause' Looming Demolition of Chinatown Jails

Demonstrators stand in front of the north tower of the Manhattan Detention Complex, which is slated to be demolished along with 17-story 124 White Street (aka The Tombs) next door. Photo: Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib

With demolition of the two Manhattan Detention Complex buildings—a year-and-a-half, $125 million project—set to begin this month, Community Board 1 and many other critics are making a last-ditch appeal to Mayor Eric Adams to “pause” the work.

The jail buildings to be dismantled, which now rise above Chinatown at 124 and 125 White Street, would make way for a nearly twice as tall 295-foot jail tower, eclipsing Chicago’s 289-foot Metropolitan Correctional Center to likely be the tallest jail in the world. 

The “megajail,” as critics call it, is part of the de Blasio administration’s borough-based jail plan for closing Rikers Island in 2027. CB1, which strongly opposes the estimated $8.3 billion plan, told Adams in a Feb. 1 letter that more time is needed for his administration and the public to “reevaluate what has been demonstrated to be an incomplete, inaccurate, and deeply flawed plan.” 

In addition, the board maintains that the plan does nothing to reform the Department of Corrections, or what it calls the “restorative justice” mistakes of the past.

On Sunday, rallyers outside the now-emptied Manhattan Detention Complex forcefully echoed CB1’s demands.

“Do you know how hard it is to take these buildings down?” said Jan Lee, co-founder of Neighbors United Below Canal, a group formed to fight the new jail. “It’s going to disrupt the entire neighborhood.” 

“Rolling in the bulldozers, rolling in the trucks, bringing in construction cranes—it’s an act of violence against the community,” he added.

In April 2021, then candidate Adams attended a rally with opponents of the proposed jail building to declare his support. “I join you today in saying no new jail. No building up a jail in this location,” he said. “We can do a better job and I know it’s possible to solve the problems we are facing with incarceration without the destruction of communities.”

Now those opponents want to hold the mayor to his word. “We’re here to ask Mayor Adams, stand with us, stand with us again,” said City Councilman Christopher Marte, who took office in January, and was a co-founder of Neighbors United Below Canal.

The mayor’s office did not respond to questions about Adams’ current position on the jail, or on CB1’s call for a demolition delay.

In a resolution passed last month, CB1 called for a host of information and documents that it says still need to be reviewed before demolition begins. They range from an updated traffic study and plan for the disposal of any hazardous materials to a cost benefit analysis ​​of the billions to be spent on the buildings. (Criminal justice reform alternatives, such as mental health services, job training and housing, should be considered for a major part of the $8.3 billion jail building budget, CB1 says.)

Last month, city contractors gave a step by step slide presentation on the takedown of the two buildings to CB1’s Quality of Life Committee. Afterwards, Alice Blank, the board’s vice chair, sounded both exasperated and saddened, noting that 124 White Street (aka The Tombs) is eligible for landmark status, and its $42 million renovation in 1983 was done without touching the exterior. “So to see the slides [showing] it coming down, the extraordinary waste involved in this demolition is really heartbreaking,” she said. Blank and others have called on the city to look at preserving and renovating 124 White Street as part of an alternative to the current plan. The city has yet to explain, they say, why the existing buildings cannot be revamped.

At the rally, Victoria Lee, president of the non-profit Welcome to Chinatown, a business and community development group, said small businesses on Baxter Street have already been asked to vacate, and impacts to residents’ health and neighborhood quality of life are soon to follow.  

“Listen to us today and know that it is not too late, Mayor Adams,” she pleaded, “it is not too late to stop this jail and reconsider what criminal justice and reform looks like.”