New York City wants to build a 'mega jail' in Chinatown. Residents are fighting back.

• A new jail in Chinatown would stand around 300 feet above ground, making it the tallest jail in the world.
• Ten people were arrested after protesting the construction of the jail.
• Residents are urging lawmakers to divert funds toward mental health services, affordable housing, and senior care programs.

When Grace Lee headed to a public protest in a corner of New York City's Chinatown, the mother of three didn't expect to end up behind bars.

On April 13, Lee and nine others were arrested after forming a human blockade in the street, disrupting the path of construction trucks heading toward the new Chinatown jail site. One of the ten arrested included Evelyn Yang, wife of former New York City mayoral candidate Andrew Yang.

"There's a symbolic irony to being held in jail today while protesting a jail," Lee, a community advocate running for State Assembly, told Insider hours after she was released from police custody. Over the past four years, Chinatown residents and advocates have been fighting the city's plans to build a high-rise jail in the neighborhood, part of its grand scheme to shut down Rikers Island by 2027. 

An $8 billion plan approved by the City Council in 2019 laid out a roadmap to substitute the infamous Rikers jail complex—a hotbed of violence where detainees are routinely subjected to abuse and fatal neglect—with a network of smaller detention centers. The idea was that, unlike Rikers, these new jails would be outfitted with state-of-the-art rehabilitation facilities to foster a more "humane" environment for detainees. Moreover, the new jails would be less crowded since they would have a total capacity of 3,300 people with 3,544 beds across the city. Rikers currently houses more than 5,000 detainees.

At 300 feet, the Chinatown jail would possibly be the tallest in the world.

The Chinatown jail will be one of four new carceral facilities built in each borough of New York—Queens, Brooklyn, Manhattan, and the Bronx—except, notably, in the predominantly white, conservative borough of Staten Island. According to a report by The Marshall Project, an important part of the Borough-Based Jail plan was to build new jails near existing courthouses, which would save taxpayers an estimated $31 million a year and allow detainees to stay closer to their families and other resources in the city. 

But the proposed jail in Chinatown holds a distinction that is hard to ignore. Unlike other jail structures that are built horizontally, the Chinatown structure is expected to go up to around 300 feet or higher—slashed down from an original proposal of 450 feet. That could make it possibly the tallest jail in the world, with an expected holding capacity of more than 800 people. The plans prompted pushback as Chinatown community members held multiple rallies, even as the neighborhood is still recovering from economic and emotional distress wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

In March, hundreds of demonstrators came out to protest the "mega jail," as critics of the jail have dubbed it, at a rally organized by Neighbors United Below Canal (NUBC), a coalition of residents in Lower Manhattan who oppose the new jail. A number of lawmakers made appearances including Council Member Christopher Marte, who represents District 1 encompassing Chinatown (Marte was a co-founder of NUBC). 

Protesters at the March rally snaked through the neighborhood's cramped busy streets as they waved signs with slogans that read "No new jails" and "Stop the mega jail." The crowds were predominantly Asian but noticeably diverse in age and background. 

For older residents, like Karlin Chan, the scene was reminiscent of mass protests that erupted decades ago over the city's plans to expand one of Chinatown's two existing jails, the Manhattan Detention Complex (MDC), otherwise known as "the Tombs." In 1982, Chan joined 12,000 protesters who flocked to City Hall to protest the $101 million construction. Now, the city wants to tear the complex down to build a single tower jail. 

"In all these years, they've done nothing to improve the conditions of Rikers. It's not Rikers itself…it's a broken system that's in Rikers," said Chan, a community activist. 

Residents continue to protest construction of the jail.

He added, "When you build this new brick building, we're gonna have the same abuses. So basically, they get to transfer the problem into newer buildings." Some, like Chan, believe the jail's construction will compound the neighborhood's depleted economy that has suffered through the aftermaths of 9/11, Hurricane Sandy, and, most recently, the pandemic.

"We're resilient and we're making comebacks," Chan said, but he believes long-term construction of the tower jail would likely dampen the community's rejuvenation efforts. Another major concern is the environmental impact it could have on the surrounding community—a largely immigrant, working-class, elderly population of East Asian descent. Demolishing the Tombs alone is expected to take over a year. 

"I am particularly concerned about the seniors who live in senior housing right next to the jail…who are 80 to 100 years old," said Lee, citing concerns over toxins such as asbestos from the old buildings that would be released into the air during demolition. Health impacts from the construction plans were raised by the NYU Center for the Study of Asian American Health, a specialized health institute under NYU Langone's Section for Health Equity, in a testimony to city officials.

Lee says she supports an alternative plan to renovate the existing MDC buildings to mitigate health concerns and shorten the timeline of the jail's construction. But the city has rejected the idea to renovate, claiming the structures "lacked the basic core capacities" to house the new jail's planned program designs.

"This jail is located very close to one of the only green spaces in Chinatown—Columbus Park—that thousands of residents use on a regular basis. And so…to compromise air quality throughout the neighborhood is really troubling and disturbing," said Lee.

Advocates urge lawmakers to divert funds into community programs.

In 2020, NUBC led a lawsuit against the city over the Chinatown jail plan citing alleged violations of environmental construction laws, including the city's Uniform Land Use Review Procedure. New York's Supreme Court granted an injunction against the new jail's construction in agreement with some of the alleged violations. However, the ruling was reversed by an Appellate Court the following year. Opponents have signaled they intend to pursue a federal lawsuit over the jail's construction. 

For Vic Lee, co-founder of the nonprofit economic development group Welcome to Chinatown, the project's hefty price tag is compounded by the lack of community return. 

"We're really furthering money into mass incarceration, all while doing this destroying community," said Vic Lee, who was arrested with Grace Lee during the April 13 protest. "In spending $2 billion right now, which a lot of it is going into the development of these buildings, you have to wonder who's really profiting from this." Advocates agree the project's billion-dollar budget should instead be allocated for senior citizen programs, mental health services, and affordable housing.

In a statement following the protesters' arrests, a spokesperson for the Mayor's Office said the city was following the law that stipulates "jails on Rikers Island must close on time" and that they had "engaged deeply with the community every step of the way" of the project. 

But Vic Lee noted many residents felt left out of the conversation about the city's plans, echoing complaints that city officials failed to engage the community properly on the matter. Mayor Eric Adams, who took office in January and inherited the Borough-Based Jail plan to close Rikers from his predecessor, has been criticized for his administration's continuation of the plan after he had publicly supported Chinatown's anti-jail efforts during his campaign appearance.

"You feel like the community is being used as a [campaign] prop," said Vic. "This is where distrust and disenchantment of government happens."

Despite early demolition work already underway at the Chinatown site, activist Karlin Chan is still hoping Mayor Adams will reverse plans for the high-rise jail somewhere down the line.

The mayor and the City Council "just don't want to reopen this whole conversation about Rikers Island," Chan said. "But that can always be repealed. Nothing is written in stone."