The long-delayed Manhattan facility, the final piece of the city’s Rikers closure plan, is slated for completion in 2032.

The long-delayed Manhattan facility, the final piece of the city’s Rikers closure plan, is slated for completion in 2032.

## Support local news today! Our nonprofit newsroom relies on readers like you to power investigations like these. **Join the community that powers NYC’s independent local news.** ### Make THE CITY Your Go-To For Local News Follow us on Google News ⭐️ During a heated Zoom meeting Thursday evening, city officials told Chinatown residents that construction on a new jail in their neighborhood would begin soon and take an estimated six years to complete. Required by law to close Rikers Island by 2027, the city plans to replace its jail facilities with smaller, modern buildings closer to courthouses. The 1,040-bed jail on White Street, the final piece of that plan, is expected to cost $3.9 billion and to be completed in 2032. The jails plan, which calls for new facilities in every borough except Staten Island, will have space for around 4,500 detainees. The Manhattan location is expected to be the last one finished as construction is already underway at the other locations. The Zoom meeting was the first time the Mamdani administration made its case to the public about how it expects to move forward with the plan, which has been in place since 2017. A representative from Tutor Perini, the firm contracted by the city to build the new jail, detailed how construction crews plan to work from 6 a.m. to midnight, Monday through Friday, and then from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturdays. ## Sign up for THE CITY SCOOP! Never miss a headline from THE CITY with our free morning newsletter. Sign up The construction executive maintained that the firm will do everything possible to mitigate vibrations and noise. But some community members on the Zoom were unconvinced and launched into vitriolic attacks in the chat, according to several screenshots obtained by THE CITY. “Blood on your hands,” one attendee posted. “That’s why you are wearing a pink shirt.” “You’re going to be wasting years of time and billions of community dollars,” another person posted. #### Latest Headlines ## De-Icing the Third Rail: Vintage Redbirds Among MTA’s Arsenal to Prep for Storm January 23, 2026Jan. 23, 2026, 7:37 p.m. ## Mamdani Nixes Monday Snow Day January 23, 2026Jan. 23, 2026, 3:06 p.m. ## Congress Defies Trump By Boosting Money for Housing January 23, 2026Jan. 23, 2026, 2:45 p.m. ## Mamdani Says City Is Prepared as Snowstorm Bears Down January 23, 2026Jan. 23, 2026, 4:03 p.m. Neighborhood activists and community leaders in Chinatown have done everything possible to stop the plan. They have protested at every public meeting, filed multiple lawsuits, and even personally lobbied the last two former mayors and Mayor Zohran Mamdani. They contend that the new jails will unduly burden their neighborhood and that the construction noise and rattling will make their homes and businesses unbearable. City officials say that the majority of major construction will be done in the middle of the day because it takes crews a while to set up. They also said the noise will likely dissipate by the end of the night because the crews need some time to wrap up. “That’s absolute bullshit,” Jan Lee, a co-founder of Neighbors United Below Canal, told THE CITY on Friday. His organization has brought a lawsuit challenging the review process for a new jail. Lee and other critics of the plan contend that the city should use the White Street site to build affordable housing and that the new jail should be located on the site of the currently empty federal Metropolitan Correctional Center on Park Row where Jeffrey Epstein died by suicide in August 2019. The federal jail was closed two years later and has remained empty ever since. “It’s in an area that would be far less dangerous to build on,” Lee said. But that alternative plan would require the federal government to transfer the property to the city. The proposal would also demand an entirely new design and construction plan — a process that would likely take years to complete. The city released updated renderings of the under-construction Manhattan jail. Credit: Via NYC.gov “The reality is that we’re about to start construction on this jail right now,” Zachary Katznelson, executive director of the Independent Rikers Commission, which advocates for the closure of the jails by the East River, told THE CITY on Friday. “You would be basically starting over from zero,” he added, noting the city has already completed the demolition by White Street and has come up with a design plan. The plan to shut down Rikers dates back decades and was finally put into place by former Mayor Bill de Blasio in March 2017. He reluctantly agreed to back the plan the day before a City Council-created commission released a highly-anticipated report recommending the closure of the 10 jail facilities on the island. Jail reformers note that the new facilities will be closer to courthouses than Rikers Island is, eliminating the grueling transportation process known to jail insiders as “bullpen therapy,” in which detainees are shuttled to and from courts starting as early as 3 a.m. Advocates and public defenders contend the exhausting commute and long waits are used by prosecutors to pressure people into pleading guilty. The new facilities will also make it easier for people to visit their loved ones behind bars, supporters of the plan point out. Over the past four years, former Mayor Eric Adams repeatedly talked about how the city should develop a “Plan B” instead of closing the jails on Rikers. But he never detailed an alternative or set aside money for construction of the new sites in his budgets. Supporters of the plan are excited over the new leadership in City Hall. During his campaign, Mamdani repeatedly called Rikers Island “a stain on the history of our city” and pledged to close the complex. But he has not yet detailed how his administration plans to manage the system in the interim, as the jail population continues to rise and the long-promised borough-based facilities remain under construction. Mamdani and his team have not yet announced a new Department of Correction commissioner or new head of the Department of Design and Construction, the agency in charge of building the new jails. Katznelson hailed the new administration and urged the mayor and his staff to speed up the construction process. He noted that the city is using prefabricated cells for all the jails. “We’ve got to be able to move things more quickly, both for the sake of Chinatown,” he said, “and for the sake of closing Rikers as soon as humanly possible.” ### _Related_