Clinton Hill Meeting Scheduled On Brooklyn Jail Expansion Plans

CLINTON HILL, BROOKLYN — Brooklynites will soon get the chance to weigh in on the city's most recent proposal to expand one of the borough's jails as part of a plan to replace Rikers Island.

Community Board 2, which oversees the Atlantic Avenue jail, announced this week that it will hold a four-hour public hearing on Thursday, April 11 at Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School in Clinton Hill.

The meeting will come just weeks after The City Planning Commission certified the latest version of the plan to have four jails across the boroughs replace Rikers, which were scaled back in size a few days before clearing that first hurdle to approval. The plan includes replacing old jails with new ones in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens and building a lockup from scratch on top of an NYPD tow pound in The Bronx.

The jails are key to Mayor Bill de Blasio's plan to close the notorious Rikers Island complex by 2027. The city aims to reduce the jail population to 5,000 and move detainees to smaller local facilities, which officials say will be safer and offer better access to courts and other services.

In Brooklyn, that would mean expanding the Brooklyn Detention Complex at 275 Atlantic Avenue to up its headcount from 815 beds to 1,437 beds for detainees. The new detention facility would create 1.2 million gross square feet, including the space for detainees, support space and community or retail space, according to city documents.

The city recently announced that each of the new jails would be slightly shorter than in their original plans, including a reduction from 430 feet to 395 tall for the Brooklyn proposal.

The Brooklyn plans also would include changes to some of the surrounding streets, which will be used to take detainees to and from the detention center, which largely holds those who have not been convicted yet but are awaiting trial, to the Brooklyn Central Courts Building on Schermerhorn Street.

The city has said it would need to de-map parts of State Street to create pedestrian bridges and tunnels to connect the jail and court building.

This plan call for about 292 parking spaces and community or retail space along Boerum Place, Atlantic Avenue, and Smith Street.

The Community Board 2 public hearing will be held at the 357 Clermont Avenue school from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. April 11. Doors will open at 4:30 p.m. and the board is recommending attendees enter from Greene Avenue, or from Clermont Avenue for stair-free access.