Jail Construction Begins At Long-Disputed Site In Kew Gardens

KEW GARDENS, QUEENS — Construction on the long-disputed Kew Gardens Jail site is slated to begin this year, according to the Mayor.

Last Friday, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that the jail’s first phase of construction will include a 105-foot tall community space and parking garage with 600-plus spots. The garage structure will be built adjacent to the vacant Queens Detention Complex, located at 126-02 82nd Avenue, which is slated to be demolished and rebuilt as an 886-bed jail by 2027, according to the Mayor.

While locals have long opposed the jail’s construction, Mayor Bill de Blasio and some other criminal justice reform advocates are celebrating the borough-based jail as the first step towards closing Rikers Island.

“Closing Rikers Island will make our city stronger and more just, and I’m proud to deliver a system that better reflects this city’s values,” said the Mayor, adding that the plan to stop incarcerating people on Rikers will make “a fairer and more equitable jail system for all New Yorkers.”

In 2018, Mayor de Blasio’s administration unveiled the plan to close the infamously inhumane jails on Rikers Island in lieu of four smaller, borough-based jail facilities, including the one in Kew Gardens.

The following year, after negotiations with City Council Member Karen Koslowitz to reduce the jail’s size and guarantee the district a list of deal-sweeteners, the City Council voted to approve the Kew Gardens jail plan, plus three others across the five boroughs.

A group of local homeowners subsequently sued the city in a last ditch effort to block the jail’s construction in 2020, citing a lack of specific land use review in Queens, since the city underwent a single land use application proposal for all four borough-based jails.

However, a New York judge ruled against the lawsuit in April 2021, writing that the city’s land use application proposal “was lawful and rational.”

Still, many locals remain strongly opposed to the jail — so much so that every single person running to replace Koslowitz for the District 29 City Council seat said they would aim to block the jail’s construction.

But, as far as the Mayor is concerned, construction is already underway.

The garage structure is slated to be completed in early-2023, with the jail opening in the neighborhood four years later.

Since the garage and community building are being constructed at an existing parking lot, 140 parking spots on the east side of the lot will remain open during construction, the Mayor said.

In addition to limiting the infrastructural impact on the neighborhood during construction, the garage itself is being built to minimize the effects on the environment — it will have a partial planted green roof, solar panels, and on-site stormwater retention according to the Mayor’s office.

The modernized facilities are not only expected to be more up-to-date, but more humane and better resourced, including space for families, options for medical and mental health care, and access to attorneys and the courts, according to NYC Department of Design and Construction Commissioner Jamie Torres-Springer.

With Mayor de Blasio’s term in City Hall coming to an end this year, Brandon J. Holmes, Co-Director of Freedom Agenda at The Urban Justice Center, sees the construction of the Kew Garden Jail as “a critical step” towards closing Rikers as well as the city’s “long-term divestment from mass incarceration and a complete transformation of our criminal legal system and responses to violence.”

“We owe this to formerly incarcerated New Yorkers who have built this movement to shutter Rikers Island and improve conditions of confinement for anyone who remains incarcerated,” he said.