A barge was mooring on the southern coast of the Bronx, once seen as an answer to the prisons piled up in New York City will be replaced by a strategic marine terminal in Hunts Point.
It was opened in 1992 as a floating prison and disabled in 2023 as part of the plan to close the city’s obsolete prisons and build modern installations based on the district, the Vernon C. Bain Corrective Center, known as Barcass, is disassociated, leaving for the planned hunting of the Navy terminal.
The Marine Terminal will create a point to download large goods on large vessels at its last stage of delivery while moving forward the distribution supply chain and prevents 9,000 truck trips each month, according to a statement issued by New York Mayor’s office Eric Adams last month.
The site is also located next to the 329 hectares of food distribution center, the largest food distribution center in the country.
Chris Canary, Deputy Vice President of the Ports, the Sea Leg and the Economic City Transport Division of New York City, says the project will help relieve the “cake” truck traffic to George Washington and Verrazzano’s bridges.
“The terminal will add a new flow to the city and a direct connection point to the Hunts Point Food Distribution Center,” Canary said. “It is also adjacent to the industrial sites that already exist: the Fulton fish market and a wastewater treatment plant. This will streamline the process and add resilience.”
The project will establish a key connection between the Ports of the East Coast, will use green technology, while creating 400 construction work and 100 permanent jobs, according to the city. For the next 30 years, the port will generate $ 3.9 billion in economic impact, according to the city.
The project is part of the largest initiative of Mayor Adams, called Harbor of the Future, establishing New York City as a destination for green technology and to expand its “blue roads”, allowing the movement of goods for water, rather than truck.
In addition, the city will invest $ 28 million to expand local access by the sea and expand the bicycle path, as part of the budget of 2026, to improve the quality of life of the premises.
NYC EDC issued a proposal request to delete the barge. Canary said that although there is still no calendar for when the Hunts Point Marine Terminal will be built, a stage of design and planning, which will include community contributions, will be built. The Economic Development Corp. He will direct a land repair effort to address the pollution of the site, scheduled for completion in 2027, according to the city.
The Correctional Center of Vernon C. Bain, known as the barge, was dismantled, giving way to the marine terminal of the scheduled hunting.
Photo courtesy of the economic development corp of New York City.
Decompose a jail barge
By 2022, the Adams administration announced its plan to unmold the prison barge as part of its Point Forward Hunts Plan, which emphasized that it would include community contributions. With a commitment of $ 40 million by the mayor, the plan describes a 15 -year vision that creates jobs, improves public safety and improves health and infrastructure in the community.
Eliminating the barge is “incredibly significant”, said Stanley Richards, president and CEO of Fortune Society, one that promotes alternatives that promote alternatives to incarceration and re -entry to society after the incarceration, adding “beyond the permanent reduction of the prison footprint, the removal of the bar opens the vital opportunities for the vital opportunities for hunt. “
Since 1992, the 800 -bed prisons have been on the East River. As part of the criminal justice reform effort of New York City, the district -based prisons program to close Rikers Island and to build new prisons in the municipalities, the city disabled many of its largest prisons, including the Barcass.
Richards said that the reduction in prison capacity “is essential to close rikers and build more human and district -based facilities.”
The Hunts Point Marine Terminal is a node of the largest blue road initiative by Mayor Eric Adams, headed by the Department of Transportation of New York City and NYCEDC, which promotes the transport of goods through the waterways in the city and the surrounding area, while increasing the resilience of transportation and reduction of the city’s more equipment, allowing the city to be more equipped. receive goods in time of disaster or emergency. Other advances made in blue road initiatives include the deployment of the Skyport Center, the multimodal nucleus for the last mile delivery, the update of Brooklyn Marine Terminal $ 18 million port operations; and the $ 164 million federal subsidy from Brooklyn Marine Terminal to transform it into a modern sea port and a mixed community.
“It was the fortuitous time that the district -based prisons program and our planning around the blue roads were aligned,” says Canary. “The boat site that is transferred to the control of Corp economic development provides the city a fantastic opportunity to advance the Blue Highways initiative in an important place for the merchandise movement in the Bronx.”
