Parking closures tied to Queens jail project delayed
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The stretch of road on 132nd Street is scheduled to close down later this month outside the construction site of the future Queens borough-based jail. Eagle photo by Noah Powelson
By Noah Powelson
Plans to temporarily shut down a number of streets around the Queens Criminal Courthouse to facilitate the building of Queens’ borough-based jail have been delayed, the Eagle has learned.
Street parking closures across 132nd Street and 126th Street, which were supposed to take effect on May 4 and May 11, respectively, have been postponed until late May and early June, according to community notices sent out by the Department of Design and Construction.
DDC did not say what caused the delay, but said the planned closures were to accommodate the jail’s construction fence and staging area.
While construction delays aren’t typically welcomed developments, especially on projects like the borough-based jails that are running years behind schedule, the pause appeared to give some relief to courthouse staff, many of whom have been struggling to find convenient and inexpensive parking after the city gated off a nearby municipal parking lot previously reserved for court staff. The now-defunct parking lot will serve as the future site of Queens’ borough-based jail.
The Queens borough-based jail is one of four jails set to be constructed throughout the city as an alternate to Rikers Island, which city law requires to be shut down by August 2027 but will assuredly not be closed by that deadline. Construction on the estimated $4 billion jail in Queens won’t be completed until 2031.
While street closures on 132nd Street and 126th Street represent another small but significant step forward for the project, they also come with the cost of roughly 100 parking spots in a high-demand area that’s already at capacity.
Drivers will still be able to drive through 132nd Street and 126th Street when the parking closures go into effect, but parking options will be severely limited. Some of the planned closed-off spaces feature free public parking, but others have spots reserved for judges, district attorney staff, or staff members for the Departments of Transportation and Citywide Administrative Services.
According to the notice from DDC, many of the reserved spots will be diverted to stretches of street parking on Queens Boulevard that border the Maple Grove Cemetery. That stretch of road is currently composed of a mix of no parking, public street parking and metered parking spots.
Queens Supreme Court, Criminal Term Administrative Judge Michelle Johnson of Queens said her office has been in active communication with both DDC and the Department of Transportation about the parking closures.
“The court leadership has met with DOT and DDC in preparation for the construction,” Johnson told the Eagle by email.
The areas of 132nd Street and 126rd Street where street parking will be closed down during construction of Queens’ borough-based jail. Screenshot via Department of Design and Construction
A DDC spokesperson also said that the city had “kept courts and other stakeholders aware of this through multiple meetings and advisories in the past few months, and we will provide a reminder to the community one week before implementing these parking restrictions.”
“We understand the impacts this necessary construction can have in regards to parking availability for workers and the public in the area,” they added.
While the area around the Queens Criminal Courthouse is a major transit hub with an E, F subway station, a Long Island Railroad station and several bus lines making regular stops nearby, for many court staff, a car is the only option to keep the commute time down, court staff told the Eagle.
Court officers in particular, many of whom live in neighboring boroughs or on Long Island, rely on their cars or carpooling to get to work on time, they said.
But with the closure of the municipal lot and future closures of nearby street parking, staff are already having to account for upward of an hour-long delay to get into work while they fight for parking alongside the hundreds of other New Yorkers who come to the courthouse every day.
Sources in the courthouse said staff who have been arriving at 7 a.m. for work now plan to arrive as early as 6 a.m. or 5:30 a.m. just to guarantee themselves a spot.
Parking has always been a premium in the Kew Gardens area, which houses both Queens Criminal Court and Queens Borough Hall, but the problem was only exacerbated after the nearby municipal lot was shut down in December 2024.
A secretary who works in Queens Supreme Court, Criminal Term, granted anonymity told the Eagle it regularly takes them 45 minutes to find a parking spot. She said that even though she has a handicapped placard, there are no nearby designated handicapped spots.
When the lot was first closed, it drew immediate pushback from judges, court staff and other organizations, including the New York State Supreme Court Officers Association.
“All of our members assigned to the adjacent courthouse are affected by these changes,” Patrick Cullen, president of NYS SCOA, told the Eagle at the time. “We are less than satisfied to this point with the new design as dozens of our members have had to make new parking plans causing an already stressful situation to worsen.”
A Queens judge given anonymity by the Eagle said that he regularly gives carpool rides to his court staff since the lot’s closure. The judge said that while his staff were relieved the parking closures were delayed for now, he hopes the city and the courts can make reliable long-term parking accommodations as the jail’s construction progresses.
“This is going to affect the wider Briarwood and Kew Gardens areas,” the judge told the Eagle.
Beyond trying to compete for parking spots in nearby residential areas, there are several private parking garages in the immediate vicinity of the courthouse.
The closest option is a municipal garage on 132nd Street which borders Queens’ borough-based jail. The garage was built as part of the borough-based jails program – the jail itself will also have 100 underground parking spots for Department of Correction vehicles, which may relieve some of the stress.
“The multi-level building includes space for 600 vehicles, 63 bike rack spots, a community area and sustainability features, including electric vehicle chargers and solar panels,” the DDC spokesperson said.
Despite this, court staff members rarely use it.
On late Tuesday morning, while the streets outside the parking lot were packed with parked cars, the municipal parking garage’s sign indicated there were over 400 empty parking spaces available.
The Queens judge told the Eagle the reason for the lack of use was simple: a 10-hour pass for the day in the municipal garage costs $20, and a monthly permit costs $330.
"Most people are willing to pay five dollars a day to park here, meanwhile they have empty spaces making nothing," the Queens judge said. "To me, it's a very easily solvable problem.”
