Plans call for new South Bronx site
By Joe Hirsch
joehirsch6@yahoo.com
Photo by Amy Ponce
Demonstrators marched and rallied last April to protest plans to build a jail in Hunts Point.
After a nearly two-year-long roller coaster ride of legal entanglements and community and political opposition, the city Department of Correction has abandoned plans to build a 2000-bed jail on a 28-acre waterfront lot at the former Oak Point rail yard.
The Department informed the law firm Seward and Kissel of its decision to scrap the plan on February 27. Seward and Kissel has been representing the Hunts Point-based environmental organization Sustainable South Bronx in its efforts to stop the city from taking the land, which Sustainable South Bronx hopes to use for an industrial park devoted to remanufacturing construction material.
“It simply doesn’t seem realistic, given the opposition of elected officials and the tie-ups in court,” said Deputy Commissioner Stephen Morrello in a telephone interview.
The city’s decision was reported first by the Law Journal in an article about Sustainable South Bronx’s law suit seeking records related to the jail plan.
The city will continue to seek a site in the South Bronx or elsewhere, Morrello said, adding that his department had no timetable for locating a new site.
He reiterated that a new jail would improve conditions for inmates and officers, compared to Rikers Island, which now houses most of the city’s prisoners who are awaiting trial or serving short sentences.
Bronx politicians have been united in their opposition to the jail proposal, which the city originally announced during a City Council hearing in the spring of 2006.
In addition, the owner of the industrially-zoned lot, developer Steven A. Smith, has been embroiled in bankruptcy proceedings over the property, and had been fighting the city’s threat to use eminent domain to acquire the land, which, he says, frightened other potential buyers away.
For now, the fate of the wooded site is still up in the air. Acquiring the land from him, said Smith, would represent “a great opportunity to stimulate economic development in the community.”
Some of the jail’s opponents, though pleased with the latest development, expressed mixed reactions to the news.
“It’s sort of bittersweet for us,” said Tanya Fields of Sustainable South Bronx. “We have a green jobs not jails campaign, and we don’t want a new jail anywhere in the South Bronx, or anywhere in the city. The mayor has said crime is going down. What do we need it for?”
The corrections department has asked Sustainable South Bronx not to pursue its lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Law for documents relating to the jail plan.
“The more insistent they are on not providing the information, the more we want to see the rationale behind this,” Fields said.
A judge has ordered the Department of Correction and the city’s Economic Development Corporation to submit documents for the court’s review by March 21.
Rep. Jose Serrano hailed the news as “a major victory.”
In a statement, he said, he hoped the site would become part of the South Bronx Greenway, but added that he would join local organizations to decide how the land should be used.
Members of Community in Unity expressed satisfaction and relief that there will be no new jail in the neighborhood, but remain wary. The umbrella organization of South Bronx and local grassroots organizations includes The Point Community Development Corporation, Mothers on the Move, Rights for Imprisoned People with Psychiatric Disabilities and Critical Resistance.
“We’re very happy about the decision, but we’d like to figure out how and where the money’s going to go,” said Damian Domenack, a spokesman for Critical Resistance, a national grass roots organization that advocates the abolition of prisons, and whose New York chapter is based in Hunts Point.
“We want to know if the money is going to go into education for communities that are impacted,” Domenack added. “Jails are tied to gentrification. Gentrification displaces people and makes them homeless, and then they’re housed in buildings with bars.”
Morrello countered that a new 2000-bed jail will represent a reduction of 10% in jail capacity rather than an increase, because the city will be eliminating beds on Rikers Island.