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Prison Locked Out of South Bronx Neighborhood
Looks like no new jail for the South Bronx.
Well, maybe not.
No one seems to know for sure.
“My head is spinning trying to keep track of all this stuff,” said Miquela Craytor, deputy director of the group Sustainable South Bronx, which had sued to stop the project.
The New York City Economic Development Commission last week notified attorneys for Craytor’s environmental activist group that the city is no longer interested in building a $375 million, 2,000-inmate prison on 28 acres in the Oak Point section of the South Bronx.
The plans have been in the works for two years. Oak Point sits near Rikers Island.
City Department of Correction spokesman Stephen Morello said plans ground to a halt in part because “elected officials in the area made it clear that they did not support a jail at the Oak Point site.”
The Correction Department remains committed to building a jail, Morello said, to “increase the capacity of the city jail system by about 10%, house the people in our custody in a safe manner, and hold them in a facility close to the communities they come from and the courts they go to.”
Last year, Sustainable South Bronx penned a study that called for the creation of a $36 million “ecoindustrial park” on the Oak Point site that was to include a construction and demolition debris recycling plant as well as facilities for wood salvage and re-milling, plastics recycling and manufacturing, and processing glass powder for concrete and masonry blocks.
Craytor said several “green” companies contacted by Sustainable South Bronx had expressed interest in opening offices on the site.
The group has run a long campaign to clean up the South Bronx, which is home to several power stations, waste transfer stations and incinerators. The area has one of the worst asthma rates in the city.
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