Jail plan moves to court after Mott Haven, Diaz initiate suit
BY ALEX MITCHELL
The mayor’s plan to build a
prison in the south Bronx is ‘criminal’
in the eyes of the Mott Haven
community.
That sentiment was reiterated
when that community launched
a lawsuit against the city over its
plan to phase out Rikers Island
and building a 24 to 25 story jail in
Mott Haven on Thursday, May 30.
The urgently marked suit was
inked by Diego Beekman Mutual
Housing, which owns properties
surrounding the planned jail at 745
E. 141st Street, and Walter Nash, a
Community Board 1 member who
would live directly across from the
planned facility on Concord Avenue.
It specifi cally targets Mayor
de Blasio, the NYC Department of
City Planning and the city’s planning
commission and is supported
by Borough President Ruben Diaz,
Jr.
“The lawsuit fi led by the residents
of Diego Beekman Houses is
a direct result of this administration’s
failure to give true consideration
to an alternative site in The
Bronx,” Diaz said.
That alternative site he is referring
to is adjacent to the Bronx
Hall of Justice on East 161st Street,
which is also referenced in the
lawsuit.
“Yet the city has blatantly refused
to give this location any consideration,”
Diaz said.
Beekman’s legal team, Stein
Adler Dabah & Zelkowitz, a midtown
Manhattan law fi rm, compiled
a list of grievances in the legal
complaint as to why the Mott
Haven jail plan seeks legal relief.
First and foremost, it indicates
that Diego Beekman had a plan to
acquire that piece city owned land
to expand its affordable housing
model while adding in a mixed use
component as well for the economic
benefi t of the neighborhood.
It also references that the Mott
Haven site is not within a close
proximity to the Bronx Hall of Justice
and other courthouses “meaning
that detainees will have to be
shuttled several miles through the
adjacent neighborhoods on buses
with armed guards each day,” according
to the suit.
Diaz backed up that sentiment,
claiming that this site “does not
meet the principles of restorative
justice.”
The lawsuit also indicates that
the Bronx site requires fi ve land
use actions while the ones in each
of the other boroughs only require
either two or three.
It also mentions that the uniform
land use review procedure
“is facially defective in failing”
to meet Diaz’s comments and alternative
site proposal, in its own
words.
“In the interest of political expediency
the administration has
chosen the wrong site for its proposed
jail,” Diaz said, continuing
that the Mott Haven community is
jusfi ed to take legal action against
the “city’s intransigence.”
Each of the 24 members that sit
on CB1 voted against the mayor’s
plan to erect the incarceration facility
in their residential area on
Thursday, May 23.
That vote came exactly a week
after the CB1 Land Use Committee
also unanimously locked down the
proposal as well.
The board’s Land Use Ccommittee
is chaired by Beekman’s
CEO, Arline Parks who personally
signed off on the lawsuit.
“This land use process must be
stopped so that the Bronx jail site
can be independently reviewed
and we can determine the best location
for a new jail, not the quickest,”
she said.
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