[ad_1]
The Adams administration has inked contracts for nearly $7 billion total with two New York-based design-build teams to erect new borough-based jail facilities.
The borough-based jails are slated as replacements for Rikers Island. The Department of Design and Construction awarded the Sweet Group — under the limited liability company Transformative Reform Group — a contract for $2.9 billion to build the Bronx facility, and Leon D. DeMatteis Construction Corp. a contract for $3.9 billion to build the Queens facility, totalling $6.8 billion, according to a notice that appeared in the city register Monday.
The Sweet Group, located at 5 Hanover Square in the Financial District, previously worked with the city on building out Covid-19 vaccination units across the five boroughs, including 31 brick-and-mortar locations and two mobile providers. The firm will build the 777,150-square-foot
jail at 745 E. 141st St. in Mott Haven on the site of the former Lincoln Hospital and an NYPD tow pound. The firm also erected the 28-story WeWork building at 10 Wall St. and the Queens Public Library Mitchell Linden Technology Annex Branch expansion.
The Elmont, Nassau County, firm run by the DeMatteis family will build the 764,350-square-foot facility at 126-02 82nd Ave. in Kew Gardens, on the site of the former Queens Detention Complex. The Long Island-based team is also currently constructing a 310,274-square-foot Success Academy Charter Schools campus in the Bronx, slated to be completed in 2026.
Two other borough-based jails are planned: one in Brooklyn, and one in Manhattan. All four facilities, which together will cost $15.5 billion, will contain 1,040 beds, said Jeffrey Margolies, a spokesman for the Department of Design and Construction. Only the Queens jail will provide beds — 590 of them — for women. Construction at both sites is expected to start in August, Margolies said.
The four new facilities will provide 3,544 total beds and house no more than 3,300 people total, many of whom are currently being detained on Rikers — where at least 31 people have died since 2022, according to the Vera Institute, and where hundreds of women have been sexually assaulted, Gothamist recently reported.
Last year the city secured a $2.9 billion contract with Los Angeles-based firm contract Tutor Perini to build the Brooklyn jail. A contract for the Manhattan facility has not yet been awarded.
In 2017 then-Mayor Bill de Blasio pledged to close the notoriously violent Rikers Island in the middle of the East River — where the majority of those incarcerated have not yet been convicted of a crime — and put forward a roadmap to replacing the complex with a smaller “network of modern, safe and humane facilities” where the incarcerated could await trial closer to home.
In March, however, Jacques Jiha, the city’s budget director, told the City Council that the original, and legally mandated, deadline to shutter Rikers by August 2027 is “not going to happen.”
The contracts for the Bronx and Queens facilities, however, are not final and are subject to a public hearing May 16, the notice says.
The Sweet Group declined to comment, and Leon D. DeMatteis Construction Corp. did not respond to a request for comment.
[ad_2]
Julianne Cuba , 2024-05-06 19:51:26
Source link