Rikers replacement in Manhattan to open five years after jail complex’s closure

The Manhattan borough-based jail is scheduled to open in 2032, five years after the city’s deadline to close Rikers Island, according to city documents. Rendering via DDC

By Jacob Kaye

With only two and a half years to go before the legally-binding deadline to close Rikers Island, the city this week moved forward with the final of its four contracts for the construction of the borough-based jails set to replace the notorious jail complex in the coming decade.

And while it’s long been expected, the contract presented Thursday made it official – none of the borough-based jails will be completed before Rikers is required to close. Nonetheless, the city hasn’t even publicly suggested that it is attempting to figure out what to do with the thousands of detainees in the years between Rikers’ closure and the opening of its replacements.

On Thursday, the city held a public hearing on the proposed contract for the construction of the Manhattan borough-based jail, which is set to be built in Chinatown. Like the three other contracts for the jails in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx, the contract for the Manhattan jail extends well beyond the city’s August 2027 deadline to close Rikers and is nearly twice as expensive as originally anticipated.

The Manhattan jail, which is perhaps the most controversial of all the borough-based jail projects, is expected to cost taxpayers $3.8 billion and may not be completed until mid-2032, five years after Rikers is required to close.

It will likely be the last of the borough-based facilities to be completed. Brooklyn’s jail is scheduled to be completed by 2029, and the jails in the Queens and the Bronx are expected to be completed by 2031.

In all, the four facilities are expected to cost nearly $16 billion, twice as much as the original $8 billion price tag estimated by the city when it first crafted the closure plan over half a decade ago.

While the contract with Tutor Perini O & G Industries for the construction of the Manhattan jail is not final, its timeline and price tag are unlikely to change significantly by the time the contract is finalized in the coming months.

The mayor, who has grown more and more opposed to the plan to close Rikers throughout his first three years in office, has yet to square how the city will handle the multi-year gap between Rikers’ closure and the opening of the four borough-based jails.

A mayoral spokesperson said that the city was beginning to look at potential sites to house detainees during the years the city is without permanent jail facilities but declined to name any specific sites on the city’s list.

Even whether or not the city will close Rikers by 2027 has become unclear in recent years.

Adams, who is up for reelection this year and who is facing challenges from several candidates who have long supported the plan to close Rikers, has been extremely critical of the city’s plan to shutter the notoriously violent and decrepit jail complex, which was crafted by his predecessor, former Mayor Bill de Blasio.

Under Adams, the plan has not only undergone major changes but, in some aspects, has largely come to a halt.

Originally, the four borough-based jails were designed to hold 3,300 detainees in total. Advocates and lawmakers behind the closure plan envisioned that each jail would be built with safety and the better treatment of detainees in mind – the jails would theoretically be closer to the detainee’s family and friends, smaller and would include improved medical spaces and programming areas.

However, over the past several years, Adams has, on multiple occasions, added more cells to the four facilities. Citing the ballooning population on Rikers, which has grown nearly every month since Adams took office, Adams said 3,300 beds wouldn’t be enough to fit the number of detainees in the city’s custody come 2027.

Currently, the city claims the borough-based jails will be built to hold 4,400 people. It’s unclear if that number will increase as the city continues its design process of the Queens, Bronx and Manhattan jails.

Despite frequently criticizing the city’s inability to deal with detainees on Rikers Island who have been diagnosed with a mental health issue – around 50 percent of the jailed population has been diagnosed with a mental illness and about a quarter have been diagnosed with a severe mental illness – Adams ordered the city to eliminate some of the mental health beds in the borough-based jails to make space for more general population cells.

Still, the math doesn’t add up. Around 6,600 detainees were held on Rikers in December and City Hall has yet to roll out a detailed plan to reduce the population by over 2,000 detainees by the time the borough-based facilities are the only jails in New York City.

"While the Adams administration will always follow the law, it has become painfully clear that the plan approved under the last administration leaves open serious questions about the city's ability to keep New Yorkers safe,” mayoral spokesperson Liz Garcia told the Eagle in a statement. “As Mayor Adams has said, we cannot be so idealistic that we’re not realistic about the timeline and cost of closing Rikers while also protecting public safety. We remain committed to completing the borough-based jails — which is what we must do to protect public safety — provide humane conditions for those in custody, and close the jail on Rikers Island in keeping with the law.”

In the fall of 2023, the mayor and City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams together re-convened the Independent Rikers Commission, which came up with the original plan to close Rikers, to reevaluate the city’s closure plan given the delays to construction of the new jails and the rise in population. Though the commission was originally expected to issue its report toward the end of 2024, it’s now expected to do so in the coming weeks, multiple sources told the Eagle.

Zachary Katznelson, who serves as the executive director of the commission, told the city on Thursday during the public hearing on the Manhattan jail project that the city should figure out ways to speed up the construction process and bring down its costs.

To start, Katznelson said the city should break ground on the jail project even before it’s finished designing its interior rather than wait until all designs are finished to begin construction, a method currently being used by the Port Authority for some of its projects.

“If [the city] were following the Port Authority model, that would add some financial risk for the city, yes, but the Port Authority could advise on how to best mitigate that risk,” Katznelson said. “And the risk of keeping Rikers open for months and months longer than necessary is greater still.”

Sarita Daftary, the co-director of the advocacy group Freedom Agenda, also urged the city to get the jail built “as swiftly as possible” during the hearing.

“These buildings are necessary both for the moral purpose of ending the human rights crisis that is produced by the horrific conditions on Rikers, but also the legal requirement of closing the Rikers Island jails by 2027,” Daftary said. “It's essential that the city move as quickly as possible, and as quickly as possible is not reflected in the contract.”