Marte Asks Council Colleagues to Help Halt Jail Demolition; Reuse Buildings

On Centre Street, a worker erects part of a sidewalk bridge in advance of the planned lengthy demolition of the former Manhattan Detention Complex. Photo: Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib

As protective sidewalk sheds were going up around the demolition site of the Manhattan Detention Complex towers, Councilman Christopher Marte was in the City Council chambers on Feb. 16 offering a resolution to keep the two jail towers standing. 

Marte, for years a leading opponent of the city’s plan to replace the 124 and 125 White Street buildings with a single 295-foot high tower, has led marches, spoken out at rallies and tried to cajole the mayor into halting what he and other opponents see as an extravagant waste of city funds and at least a 5-year disruption to the surrounding Chinatown community. Now he is calling on fellow councilmembers to support his Resolution 505 [1], a call to allow the structures at 124 and 125 White Street to remain standing while, at the same time, gutting and repurposing the interiors to meet the requirements of the borough-based jail program [2]. That plan, envisioned by the de Blasio administration more than three years ago, calls for closing Rikers Island by 2027 and replacing it with a jail in each borough except Staten Island.

“There is too much to risk when we have an opportunity to move forward with a win, win, win,” Marte said at a press briefing on Friday. “A win for the administration and the borough-based jail plan proposal, a win for the community, and for the people who will be placed there.” 

Marte said he is now seeking council co-sponsors of the resolution, which he hopes will lead to a hearing before the council’s Committee on Criminal Justice. Carlina Rivera, the committee’s chair, declined to comment on Marte’s resolution. In a statement, spokesman Edward Amador said, “Council Member Rivera’s priority is to ensure this Mayoral administration upholds the legal commitments to close Rikers Island and transition to more humane facilities that would connect people to their communities as agreed upon in the Borough Based Jails plan.”

Although the buildings still stand, considerable demolition of the site is going on inside and around them, including the recent take-down of the footbridge connecting the two buildings. The Adams administration says that the South Tower, known as the The Tombs and renovated and reopened in 1986, can’t withstand the required renovation and would risk collapse. Officials say the North Tower, completed in 1992, also can’t be adapted to the purposes of the of the borough-based jail program, though they do not give a reason.

Marte says the city has never produced a study that supported its claim that the South Tower, which is eligible for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places, could not undergo the kind of repurposing, known as adaptive reuse, that he and others are advocating. 

“We have consulted some of the world’s leading experts in adaptive reuse to tell the mayor and his team that it can be done here, and that’s how we should move forward to have a humane facility for the people who will be there, and also to respect the community,” he said.

“Right now it is not too late to stop this process temporarily and take a real assessment of what can be done,” said Jan Lee, co-founder with Marte of Neighbors United Below Canal [3], a group formed to fight the new jail tower. “When the buildings are gone, adaptive reuse is no longer an option.”

Marte noted that while the jail buildings in the three other boroughs are now either being taken down or already demolished, the Chinatown towers still stand due to the efforts of those who have opposed the plan for Chinatown over the years. “It’s thanks to our community,” he said, “that the structures are still up.”