Work Partially Halted on Jail Demolition After Damage to Senior Center
The City’s Department of Buildings (DOB) on Tuesday evening issued a limited Stop Work Order at the site of the partially razed Manhattan Detention Complex (MDC)—located on White Street, between Baxter and Centre Streets—after demolition work cracked walls in the adjoining Chung Pak residential facility for seniors. The order allows most work on the project to continue, but prohibits activity within ten feet of Chung Pak, which contains 88 homes for the elderly, along with office, retail, and community space.
The issue first arose on March 2, when several cracks suddenly became visible along interior walls of Chung Pak. Gramercy Group, the civil engineering contractor overseeing the MDC demolition, inspected the damage and made temporary, cosmetic repairs. Gramercy’s safety monitoring consultant, Vibranalysis, recommended that the firm keep large, motorized equipment away from Chung Pak, and limit its staff to handheld tools, like drills, when working near the senior facility.
But on Saturday, however, Gramercy personnel were once again using heavy demolition equipment on remnants of the MDC structure that touched Chung Pak, and several new cracks appeared on walls inside the building, according to Jan Lee, a Chinatown community leader and co-founder of Neighbors United Below Canal (NUBC).
The problem continued to worsen on Monday, Mr. Lee said, as the fissures that had appeared days earlier lengthened and widened. This prompted emergency calls to DOB, which issued its Stop Work Order late Tuesday. He adds that engineers and architects working with NUBC have offered assurances that the damage detected thus far does not appear to have compromised the structural integrity of Chung Pak, but cannot predict the impact of further impairments.
City Council member Christopher Marte, who has long been critical of the MDC demolition plan, toured the site before DOB inspectors arrived. He said, “if this is not a red flag about the demolition’s progress, then I don’t know what is. We need an independent monitor, so our neighbors aren’t breathing contaminated dust, our seniors can live without fear, and the structural integrity of buildings isn’t compromised. This partial Stop Work Order isn’t enough. We need a full Stop Work Order to protect our community.”
A spokesman for the City’s Department of Design and Construction (which is supervising the MDC project) and a representative for Gramercy Group were not available to comment on Tuesday evening.
Mr. Lee said, “if a Park Avenue residential building had been damaged, a full Stop Work Order would have been issued. But because this is Chinatown and the residents are Chinese, we aren’t given the same respect by the City. It’s as plain as that.”
He continued, “the partial Stop Work Order that was issued today is meaningful to the community. NUBC acted quickly in responding to Chung Pak’s concerns, and all our elected representatives were on the phone with the City as soon as they heard and saw the photos. Together, they all helped us to get the DOB to move quickly. However, this response from DOB is not enough. We demand a full Stop Work Order. Anything short of this is still dangerous, so long as a reckless contractor is still allowed to work in Chinatown, in close proximity to our kids, our seniors and our businesses.”
For years, controversy has dogged the plan by the administration of Mayor Eric Adams to demolish the existing MDC and erect a much larger jail in its place, as part of a broader project to close the City’s centralized detention facility on Rikers Island and replace it with four borough-based jails (one in each borough except Staten Island).
Critics of this plan, which is officially priced at $9 billion, predict will likely cost many billions more and take much longer than the three years remaining in the official timeline. The same skeptics also envision years of harmful environmental impacts from demolition and construction, followed by decades of crowding on local streets as thousands of staff and support personnel report to the new facility each day.
In a separate (but related) development, two days after MDC demolition caused the first cracks to appear in the Chung Pak center, the Adams administration’s budget director admitted during a City Council hearing that the City will not meet its legally mandated 2027 deadline to close the jail on Rikers Island.