QUEENS — Several residents in Kew Gardens are outraged around a planned jail site they say will modify their neighborhood.
“Unfortunate it’s a syndrome of ‘not in my yard,’” stated Kew Gardens resident Amy Goldman. “I sense lousy for the people today, but I really don’t want them in my neighborhood.”
“We want our community to keep protected,” included Jodi Schuldenfrei, also of Kew Gardens. “We’re not safe and sound with that going on and the site visitors dilemma is constantly a enormous difficulty, primarily the place the jail is.”
In 2018, previous Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a strategy to shut down Rikers Island and replace it with four borough-primarily based jails, other than on Staten Island. In accordance to the city, these internet sites would be scaled-down and more humane. Just one of these proposed web pages would land at an present parking ton involving 126th and 132nd Road in Kew Gardens.
“You just never know what’s likely to come about and I do totally realize that the way they taken care of the people at Rikers Island was just dreadful and inhumane,” Goldman explained. “There has to be a improved way.”
“It’s not the folks that are incarcerated,” stated Kew Gardens community Ronald Rubin. “It’s the component that comes to the neighborhood to take a look at the persons that are incarcerated.”
Dominick Pistone is the president of the Kew Gardens Civic Association. He states the plan has been turned down unanimously via the neighborhood board. The Kew Gardens Affiliation states it is been trying to get in contact with Mayor Eric Adams to current an choice plan.
“It was generally pressured down our throat,” Pistone explained. “We think the new administration, they’re not bound by the issues of the previous administration. [The city] really should look at this alternate program.”
The above $8 billion approach is established to be handed around to the Department of Corrections in 2027, the exact yr the town programs to completely shut Rikers. So significantly, there is a parking great deal and a new local community room at the Kew Gardens web-site.
“No make any difference exactly where you set it, they are not gonna want it,” explained Rubin. “So I really do not know the answer.”
In the tumble, the DDC will get started an 18-month task to do water principal work, which will near section of 82nd Avenue from 126th to 132nd Street. That part of the road will be closed to full the new jail internet site.
