'Our Worst Fears.' Jail Demolition Damages Chinatown Senior Residence.

Gary Wat, a manager of the senior residence Chung Pak, looks at damage caused to the building by jackhammering on the other side of the wall. Photo: Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib

The city partially halted demolition Tuesday of the jail next to Chung Pak, a low-income senior residence in Chinatown, citing damage to the building from heavy jackhammering equipment. Before work can resume within 10 feet of the building, according to the order, contractor Gramercy Group, Inc., must provide an engineer’s assessment of the damage along with a plan for continuing the work without further destruction to the 96 Baxter Street complex, which also houses a health clinic and day care center. 

Video supplied by Chung Pak management is said to show jackhammering on March 2 on the wall next to the Chung Pak corridor that was damaged.

Much of the north tower of the Manhattan Detention Complex at 124 and 125 White Street now largely lies in a mound of pulverized rubble, a prelude to the site being cleared for excavation and the eventual construction of a 295-foot-high jail tower that community activists had fought against for years. The new jail is part of the city’s borough-based jail plan for closing Rikers Island.

Sherman Eng, president of the Chung Pak Local Development Corp., managers of the 88-unit residence, said he was “shocked” when he saw the cracks and buckling along the ground-floor cinder block wall of a 60-foot corridor next to the site. But he said he also worries about potential damage that is not visible. “I have no idea about the second and third floor because those are covered with sheetrock,” Eng said in a phone interview. He has hired an engineer to assess the damage.

The clinic and day care center sustained water damage, Eng said, noting that the clinic was forced to close for a day due to noise and vibrations. Edward Cuccia, a lawyer whose office is also in the building, said he was unable to work in his office for four or five days. “The noise was so bad it literally was like a jackhammer next to you, that’s how loud it was,” he said.

“The constant banging, shaking, sometimes you feel like you’re having a heart attack,” Eng said. “Can you imagine how all the older people feel?”

Along the corridor, cinder blocks are cracked, slanted or protruding from the wall. Daylight can be seen through some of the cracks. In one spot, a gauge meant to measure the changes in a crack had popped out of the wall. “Bear in mind, these gauges are epoxied onto the wall, so it takes a significant amount of force to fling one of these off the walls,” said Gary Wat, Eng’s assistant, who showed the damage to the Trib.

Wat said that Vibranalysis, Inc., the vibration monitoring company on the site, told Gramercy to stop its work with heavy machinery near the building after an excessive vibration alert on March 2 led the company to inspect the damage along the wall. But as late as March 9, he said, workers were back with the same machine “and caused more damage along the outer portion of the corridor.”(The most recent publicly available posting of environmental readings is from January.)

The damaged wall is on the low-rise Centre Street side of Chung Pak, while the center’s residential tower occupies the Baxter Street side where, according to Wat, portions of the jail building have yet to be demolished. “This is not a load-bearing wall,” he noted of the damaged corridor. “My concern is, what happens when they move to Baxter, if this is a preview of what’s to come. We trusted that they weren’t going to do this.”

On Tuesday, City Councilman Christopher Marte notified city officials about the damage, leading to an inspection and the partial stop work order. He and others are now calling for a “full construction pause until safety can be guaranteed.”

“This is just a demolition, we’re not even talking about the foundation work, we’re not even talking about the dewatering,” said Marte, who, before he took office, had been a co-founder with Jan Lee of Neighbors United Below Canal, a group that fought the de Blasio administration’s plan to raze of the two Manhattan Detention Center jails. (The south tower, next to the criminal courthouse, is being readied for demolition.) “If this is the type of work that they do for [demolition], then it’s going to fulfill our worst nightmare of what can happen, not only to this building but the tenement buildings on Baxter Street.”

Gramercy Group did not respond to a request for comment.

In March 2019, Chung Pak residents and activists opposed to the demolition of the Manhattan Detention Complex and building of a new jail tower, stood on the steps of City Hall chanting “Save our seniors!” and “Stop this process!” “It is unfair and unjust to put these people through this kind of ordeal,” Jan Lee said at the demonstration.

Now, five years later, Lee said those worries have been proven warranted. “The day that we feared has come,” he said. “It is here.”