Officials break ground on new SE Queens precinct
/
Mayor Bill de Blasio joined Rep. Gregory Meeks and Queens Borough President Donovan Richards, among others, to break ground on the new 116th Precinct in Rosedale Monday. Photo via Mayor’s Office/Flickr
By Jacob Kaye
Work began on the long-awaited 116th Precinct in Rosedale Monday, as the mayor, borough president, various elected officials and community leaders broke ground on the project.
Mayor Bill de Blasio, who is working out of Queens Borough Hall this week, was joined by Queens Borough President Donovan Richards, Rep. Gregory Meeks and City Councilmembers Selvena Brooks-Powers and Adrienne Adams to officially mark the start of the long-delayed precinct.
“I can absolutely attest that sometimes government doesn't listen, sometimes government doesn't act – this one makes so much sense,” de Blasio said. “The simple message is that Southeast Queens deserves this, Southeast Queens has a right to public safety and reform.”
The new 116th Precinct will take over half the territory currently patrolled by the 105th Precinct, which is home to some of the slowest response times in the city. The current precinct covers the easternmost portion of mainland Queens, from Glen Oaks and Floral Park in the north to Springfield Gardens and Rosedale in the south.
The fifth largest precinct in the city, the 105th covers nearly 12.5 square miles and 345 miles of roadway.
The new precinct, which will be built where a 105th Precinct satellite office currently stands at 244-40 North Conduit Ave., will cover Rosedale, Springfield Gardens, Brookville and Laurelton. Construction, which began last month, is expected to be completed by January 2024. It’s expected to cost $104.8 million.
The project, which will include a community center, has had a tenuous past that at times left its future in doubt.
First advocated for in the 1970s, the project was approved by the city in 2017. Its funding was cut in 2020 as the city grappled with racial justice protests and the national conversation about race and policing.
Last year, the mayor said the city lacked the money to fund the capitol budget as New York City was in the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic. Some of the funding went toward the building of a new Roy Wilkins Recreation Center in Jamaica.
“We were going through a horrible situation because of COVID and the ability to invest in communities meant we had to make choices,” de Blasio said last year. “And we did take resources from the NYPD and put them into community needs like youth centers, recreation centers, etc. This 116th Precinct building was something that could not happen in that environment because of those trade-offs.”
Funding was restored for the precinct in April.
Richards, who represented the area the new precinct will serve during his time in the City Council and was an early booster for the new station house, stressed the need for a strong relationship between the incoming officers and the community.
“There’s been a lot of tension over the course of the last year or two within the police department and communities but one thing we know, right here in Southeast Queens, is that there is no contradiction for asking for safe streets and also police reform at the same time,” Richards said. “We will never sacrifice pushing the department to do better but also working with the department as well.”
The new precinct is planned to include a community center, an outdoor plaza space and a food pantry.
“This is what modern day, 21st Century policing needs to look like in order to create safe communities and also a department that’s responsive, as well,” he added.
Adams, who chairs the City Council’s Committee on Public Safety, said the groundbreaking was a “historic moment decades in the making.”
“This precinct will cut response times for residents, provide more resources for public safety and improve police-community relations,” Adams said.
Meeks said he expects the precinct to bring the community together.
“We're here today to break ground on a dream that has been deferred for far too long on a reality that is most important for this community at a time when it's most needed, uniting and bringing a community together,” he said.
