Construction has not yet started on what could become the world’s tallest jail, a 300-foot-tall tower on a site in Manhattan’s Chinatown where the remnants of a former detention center still stand.
But local residents and businesses say they’re suffering through its prelude: a noisy, dusty and earthshaking demolition to lay the groundwork for the jail, in a neighborhood still reeling from the pandemic.
Since demolition began last spring, large cracks have formed along the wall of a neighboring senior center, where residents shut their windows to block out dust. Longtime businesses have warned that they may have to close because of reduced foot traffic or costly renovations. A pediatric health center has already moved, citing constant noise and ceiling leaks.
Now, community groups that opposed the new jail are pushing for more accountability at the demolition site, formerly home to the Manhattan Detention Complex, also known as the Tombs. Locals are bracing for a yearslong construction process that they fear will become only more disruptive.
“This is a worst-case scenario,” Christopher Marte, the city councilman who represents the neighborhood, said at a community board meeting on March 20. He noted the widening cracks in a wall at the Chung Pak senior housing center next door, a mixed-use building that also includes a day care center, medical facilities and other commercial tenants.
The cracks are not a structural threat to the building, according to city officials and the demolition contractor, Gramercy Group Inc., which has said it will repair the damage. But tenants fear that the looming tear-down of a second building on the site could cause more damage.
The dispute stems from a 2019 decision by the City Council to close the notorious Rikers Island jail complex, where reports of violence and detainee deaths have surged in recent years, and replace it with four borough-based jails that are meant to be more humanely designed and closer to detainees’ lawyers and families.
Critics of the demolition include the same community groups that successfully sued in 2020 to temporarily halt the plans to build the new jail in Chinatown, over concerns about its environmental impact.
An appellate court decision the following year allowed the project to proceed, and reaffirmed, for some, that Chinatown would once again shoulder the burden of a disruptive civic construction project, while businesses were still recovering from pandemic closures and anti-Asian sentiment.
The block-wide Chinatown jail, at 124-125 White Street, is expected to have 1,040 beds, underground parking and 20,000 square feet of community and commercial space on the street level.
The demolition is expected to be mostly finished by early 2025, according to a spokesman for Gramercy Group. The city has not yet chosen a builder for the eventual jail tower, but zoning could allow it to rise above 300 feet.
Proponents say its construction will be vital to the city’s effort to close Rikers Island, which City Hall recently acknowledged is unlikely to happen by the legally mandated 2027 deadline.
Chinatown has been a repository for unpopular civic projects since at least the 19th century, when the original jail complex was built there, said Kerri Culhane, an architectural historian who studies the neighborhood.
“The city has this conflict between promoting Chinatown as this important, authentic place, but at the same time doing everything it can to make it as hard as possible for local businesses,” she said.
“We are the dumping ground,” said Jan Lee, a co-founder of Neighbors United Below Canal, a nonprofit group that represents Chinatown residents and business owners. He pointed to the presence of several homeless shelters in the neighborhood, while there have been no major affordable housing initiatives in years.
Chung Pak, the senior housing project that was damaged during demolition, has a past tied to the jail site. The 13-story complex was built with financial support from the city in the mid-1980s, as part of a deal to assuage concerns about the construction of a new jail next door.
When that part of the jail complex was torn down this month, managers at Chung Pak said they discovered deep cracks on the ground-floor wall that abuts the demolition site.
Roughly a third of the people living near the site are 65 or older, in a neighborhood where 60 percent of residents are Asian, according to a census analysis by Social Explorer, a demographics firm.
Chung Pak has 88 apartments for low-income older people who spend a third of their income on rent, an arrangement that allows the complex’s largely immigrant population to stay in the community. Despite concerns about the demolition, there is a waiting list of over 3,000 applicants, said Gary Wat, an operations manager at the complex.
Foi Lin Cheng, 74, and her husband were able to move into a high-floor apartment there about eight years ago — but only because her husband had entered the housing lottery when the building opened more than 30 years ago. She said she was grateful for the space, but frightened by the demolition next door.
“Sometimes it shakes so much, I feel like the building is going to collapse,” said Ms. Cheng, who is originally from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
She said she did not have allergies before demolition began last spring, but that now she goes through a box of tissues a day.
There were no days in the last three months in which dust concentration at the site exceeded permissible limits, according to a report issued by the contractor. The demolition site is equipped with monitors to track noise, vibration and air quality. A spokesman for the company also said that water hoses were used to mitigate dust.
But the demolition could still pose a risk to nearby tenants, especially older residents, said Judith Zelikoff, a toxicologist at N.Y.U.’s medical school. Ms. Zelikoff wrote in an affidavit in support of the 2020 lawsuit that an environmental review of the jail site was inadequate.
Older residents “are disproportionately vulnerable to health risks,” she said, adding that she was concerned about exposure to heavy metals and other harmful matter that can be released in a demolition.
The dust “sticks on your skin,” said Edward Cuccia, an immigration lawyer whose office is in the Chung Pak building. “You get an itchy feeling. It’s grainy and gross.”
Liz Garcia, a spokeswoman for City Hall, said the city was finalizing a contract to hire an independent air quality monitor for the rest of the demolition. She said the completion of the demolition project was essential “to protect public safety, provide humane conditions for those in custody and close the jails on Rikers Island.”
The demolition may also be affecting residents’ health in less obvious ways. The Charles B. Wang Community Health Center, another tenant of the Chung Pak building, said it moved its pediatric services out of the building last spring, because of frequent noise and leaky ceilings that coincided with the demolition.
Kaushal Challa, the health center’s chief executive, estimates that relocating pediatric care to an office nearby, with fewer examination rooms overall, has translated into 10,000 fewer patient visits across all of its services, and a loss of up to $3 million in revenue and expenses.
“It’s really hurting us,” said Mr. Challa, whose center primarily serves low-income and uninsured patients.
Others are concerned about what will happen after the demolition. William Bialosky, an architect who lives near the site, said that excavation work for the new jail tower could be risky, because the site sits on top of a former pond that would have to be drained. That process could shift the soil beneath nearby buildings, he said, including old tenements that could be damaged or even torn down.
“You could get to a spot where a building becomes so expensive to restore that it’s cheaper to demolish,” he said.
An abiding fear for the owners of several nearby businesses is that the jail project will present more financial challenges, when many have not yet recovered from the pandemic.
Andy Ha, the owner of Nha Trang One, a Vietnamese restaurant that opened across the street from the jail in 1992, said he had to close for seven months during the pandemic’s peak. He still owes his landlord about two months of back rent, more than $30,000.
His lease is expiring this year, he said, and while he was once sure he would run the restaurant for years to come, business is down about 15 percent since the demolition started, and he is now considering closing.
“People don’t pass by here anymore,” he said.
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