The Bronx's floating jail is finally getting the boot—here's what's taking its place
Mayor Eric Adams announced the plans on Monday at a press conference near the site, calling the project part of his administration's broader 'Blue Highways' initiative. The initiative aims to shift freight delivery away from diesel-guzzling trucks and toward marine and electric transport, using the city's waterways to cut emissions and ease street congestion.
'This is lowering emissions, bringing jobs and creating a vibrant community here in the Bronx by boosting economic output,' Adams said, standing near a rendering of the future terminal.
The floating jail, opened in 1992 as a stopgap for Rikers Island overcrowding, was only meant to be temporary. Instead, it operated for more than 30 years, housing up to 800 detainees at its peak. The barge was decommissioned in 2023, but it remained docked until now. Its removal marks a milestone in the city's long-term decarceration efforts and in the transformation of South Bronx infrastructure.
According to the city's Economic Development Corporation, the new terminal will generate roughly 400 construction jobs, 100 permanent jobs and $3.9 billion in economic impact over the next 30 years. It's expected to remove 9,000 truck trips from city streets each month, particularly from communities like the South Bronx, which have long borne the brunt of traffic-related pollution.
'The vision to transform the decommissioned Vernon C. Bain Center into the Hunts Point Marine Terminal will usher in a new era for this site that will result in not only a new 'Blue Highways' facility, but bring waterfront access, greenway improvements, and much-needed good-paying jobs for the Hunts Point community,' said NYCEDC president and CEO Andrew Kimball.
The marine terminal is currently entering the design and planning phase. NYCEDC will also begin environmental remediation of the land, which is expected to be finished by 2027.
The terminal will serve as a key node in the city's growing Blue Highways network, including the Brooklyn Marine Terminal and other proposed waterfront logistics hubs. For Hunts Point, the change signals a long-overdue shift—from isolation and incarceration to jobs, investment and cleaner air.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Time Out
7 hours ago
- Time Out
July 2025 was one of the safest summer months on record in New York City
New York City's summer crime wave? More like a summer crime ripple. The NYPD just dropped stats showing that July 2025 wasn't just safer than last summer—it was one of the safest Julys since the city started keeping records. Across the five boroughs, shootings hit all-time lows for the month, with just 75 incidents and 92 victims, per a recently released report. That's down from the previous record in July 2017, when 79 incidents and 102 victims were recorded. And it wasn't just July: The first seven months of 2025 also saw the lowest number of shootings (412) and shooting victims (489) since the NYPD began tracking the category in the 1990s. Even the notoriously tricky Fourth of July weekend, a time police say can spike gun violence, saw the lowest shooting totals ever recorded for the holiday—and tied the all-time low for the day itself. Overall, major crime fell 5.6-percent in July compared to last year, marking the 10th straight month of declines. Murders dropped nearly in half (25 vs. 49), burglaries were down 14.2-percent, robberies dipped 7.5-percent and felony assaults fell 8.1-percent. In the subway, July crime was the lowest on record, excluding the pandemic's ridership-starved summers of 2020–2021. Mayor Eric Adams and Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch credit the gains to 'precision policing' and the city's Summer Violence Reduction Plan. Since May, the NYPD has deployed more than 2,000 uniformed officers to 72 'summer zones' in precincts, public housing and transit hubs, focusing on high-priority crime hot spots. The payoff: Major crime in those zones is down over 20-percent during deployment hours, with shootings cut in half. Guns remain a big part of the NYPD's focus: More than 3,000 illegal firearms have been seized this year and more than 22,900 since Adams took office. Gang takedowns are also up, with 48 major busts so far in 2025 leading to 347 arrests and 236 guns recovered. Not every number trended downward. Reported rapes rose 33-percent year-over-year in July, an increase officials link to changes in state law last fall that broadened the definition of rape to include more forms of sexual assault. Still, city officials are quick to point out the larger trajectory. 'This is the safest big city in America,' Adams said, noting that while high-profile incidents like last week's Midtown mass shooting grab headlines, they happen against a backdrop of historically low crime rates.
The Independent
2 days ago
- The Independent
Former DOJ Trump ‘loyalty test' prosecutors are planning to run for office and fight back
At this time last year, Ryan Crosswell was hard at work trying to put New York City's mayor in prison on corruption charges while serving as a prosecutor in the Justice Department. But after resigning in protest over the Trump administration's decision to drop the case against Mayor Eric Adams and cut back on prosecutions of public corruption cases, he's looking at a switching careers to making laws instead of enforcing them. According to CBS News, Crosswell, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran, left the department in February amid the uproar over the dropping of charges against Adams, a move which at the time was framed as a way to enable the mayor to better assist the Trump administration's immigration enforcement efforts. Four months later, he announced a campaign for the House of Representatives seat for Pennsylvania's seventh district against Republican Ryan Mackenzie, telling the television network: "If you're a Marine and you're a former prosecutor, you are protecting people." Crosswell is just one of a number of ex-federal prosecutors looking to continue public service careers by seeking election to various offices across the United States. The former prosecutors all have one thing in common — they left federal service in the tumultuous opening months of the Trump administration amid what have been described as loyalty tests as a condition of remaining in the government. Erika Evans, the granddaughter of Olympic track-and-field medalist Lee Evans, left the Department of Justice in March on account of the changes made to the Civil Rights Division under Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon. Dhillon, a longtime GOP activist, has made it a priority to refocus the division away from protecting racial minorities towards pushing back on alleged anti-white discrimination. Evans told CBS she resigned after receiving emails asking for DOJ employees to report colleagues involved in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion work that the Trump administration has banned. "We received emails requiring that we report any colleagues doing diversity work in the office. We had 10 to 14 days to report them or we would get in trouble ourselves," Evans said. "That was pretty disgusting." Now, she's looking to resume her public service career as Seattle's elected City Attorney. In a video released by her campaign, she says she'll 'take on Trump' if elected and 'demand the community safety we deserve' from the federal government. She explained how she'd wanted to spend her career in public service but felt she had to leave because of the Trump administration's priorities. "When I realized that that was not going to be possible any longer with the values that the Trump administration was having for the department, I knew I needed to shift,' she said.
The Guardian
4 days ago
- The Guardian
Forged signatures listed on New York City mayor's re-election campaign petition
More than 50 signatures on New York mayor Eric Adams' petition to run as an independent candidate in November's election are fraudulent, according to a report published on Friday. The Gothamist said it had found 52 signatures from people who said their names were forged, including signatures of three people who turned out to be dead. The publication cited others who said they were deceived into signing the petitions. The discovery, if confirmed, is likely to be insignificant to Adams' independent campaign, which is required to produce 7,500 signatures to qualify him as a candidate. The Adams campaign has turned in nearly 50,000 signatures. Still, the finding adds complexity to a race to lead the nation's largest city that pits the incumbent mayor against Democratic party nominee Zohran Mamdani, former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa and ex-prosecutor Jim Walden. Cuomo and Walden, like Adams, are running as independents. Flaws in the petition system to gain access to the ballot are likely to be tested in the future as candidates look for ways to circumvent the ranked-choice primary system, the publication said. Candidates typically employ outside contractors to harvest signatures. In the case of Adams' petition operation, the irregularities were attributed to at least nine workers who together submitted more than 5,000 signatures. A single campaign worker collected more than 700 signatures on a single day, the outlet said, adding that some appeared to be submitted in 'strikingly similar handwriting among many residents in a single building'. The Adam's campaign did not immediately respond to request for comment. But earlier it had told the Gothamist it expected the companies it hired to follow the law, and it would conduct its own review of the signatures. An attorney for Adams said the mayor did not direct anyone to break the law and that his campaign would 'determine whether any corrective action is warranted'. Veteran election law attorney Jerry Goldfeder told the publication it is not uncommon for invalid signatures to be collected. ' Every now and again, somebody tries to cut corners, and they're generally caught and sometimes those cases are referred to the district attorney or the US attorney, and there are prosecutions,' Goldfeder said. The report comes amid heightened tensions in the city after a gunman killed four people in a midtown office building on Monday, including off-duty New York City police officer Didarul Islam, Blackstone executive Wesley LePatner, security guard Aland Etienne and property manager Julia Hyman. The Adams administration has urged New Yorkers to seek help and support from mental health services if they find themselves struggling in the aftermath of the attack, while Mamdani is walking back past criticism of the city's police, saying his prior calls to defund the force were 'out of step' with his current thinking. 'I'm not defunding the police,' Mamdani said on Wednesday. 'I'm not running to defund the police. 'I am running as a candidate who is not fixed in time, one that learns and one that leads, and part of that means admitting as I have grown. And part of that means focusing on the people who deserve to be spoken about.' New York City's mayoral election is scheduled for 4 November.
