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In the News: The gulag around the corner
THE GULAG AROUND THE CORNER
The Gothamist gets the closest it can to an inside look at the Manhattan Correctional Center, the federal jail where Jeffrey Epstein was found dead. It’s right under our noses: “Half a block behind Manhattan’s federal courthouse, two blocks from City Hall, three blocks from the Brooklyn Bridge, and less than a mile from the hustle-and-bustle of Wall Street, sits a detention center that has been condemned by a United Nations human rights expert for exposing its inmates to conditions akin to torture. While reports of the horrendous conditions on Rikers Island helped spur Mayor Bill de Blasio’s pledge to shutter the jail’s violence-plagued facilities, far less attention has been paid to the environment inside the Metropolitan Correctional Center, the federal jail which mainly holds people who have been charged but not yet convicted of crimes, who in the eyes of the law are still presumed innocent. Yet those locked up at the MCC are subject to their own indignities and rights violations, say those who have spent time there on both sides of the bars. These include filthy conditions, vermin infestations, substandard medical care, and violence and abuse at the hands of guards.”
FRENCHETTE AT ROCK CENTER
Rockefeller Center announced that the owners of Frenchette — Riad Nasr and Lee Hanson — will take over the Brasserie Ruhlman space at 45 Rockefeller Plaza on 50th Street. The new project is as of yet untitled. –Real Estate Weekly
DOWNTOWN CONNECTION CUTTING BACK
The Broadsheet has a story about planned cutbacks to the number of stops on its free Downtown Connection shuttle bus. The plans include the elimination of six stops within Battery Park City.
THE REZONING SOHO AND NOHO
The Commercial Observer analyzes the city’s plans to rezone Soho and what that means for its streetscape. “It has opened up the possibility of legalizing residential and retail uses that have existed in the area for decades and paving the way for new development. It could radically alter Soho and Noho, which have some of the highest residential and retail rents in the city… It aims to change the current manufacturing zoning, which creates a stumbling block for landlords and has stymied development in the area since the 1970s. (Soho and Noho are zoned M1-5A and M1-5B, a designation that makes both apartments and stores illegal without a special permit.)”
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“While reports of the horrendous conditions on Rikers Island helped spur Mayor Bill de Blasio’s pledge to shutter the jail’s violence-plagued facilities, far less attention has been paid to the environment inside the Metropolitan Correctional Center.”
This again puts the lie to the idea that it is something special about Rikers which is the source of abuses, when the abuses happen here as well. Whether Rikers should be closed for other reasons is of course a consideration (e.g. distance from the courts, etc.), but closing Rikers and moving its functions around is no panacea for the abuses and injustices of the system. It still seems to me an open question: Why can’t reform and repair of abuses happen at Rikers, as well as at every other problematic existing location (such as this “Gulag” of the Tombs), without need to move the facilities around at huge expense and disruption? The disastrous result would be if after all the expense and disruption caused by the moves, the corruption, injustice, and abuse persist. In that case the moves would be found to be an empty, hollow, symbolic, and ultimately hypocritical project. If the goal is to make the system more just, then let’s get that right, and make sure that any plan is really addressing that issue. I’m not convinced that the current expensive plans do anything more than move problems around.
“Why can’t reform and repair of abuses happen at Rikers, as well as at every other problematic existing location (such as this ‘Gulag’ of the Tombs), without need to move the facilities around at huge expense and disruption?”
Because then de Blasio cannot sell off the land at Rikers to build luxury housing, extend LaGuardia Airport, and pretend to build affordable housing units.