Eighteen Chinatown community leaders warned Mayor Zohran Mamdani that building a 16-story jail on the soft, waterlogged ground of lower Manhattan could cause irreversible damage to homes, businesses, and senior housing nearby.
The leaders sent a letter dated August 21 to Mamdani, Deputy Mayor Julia Kerson, City Council Speaker Julie Menin, and Dana Kaplan, the administration's "Close Rikers' Czar", urging the city to reconsider its plans for a massive new detention facility at 124, 125 White Street in Chinatown. The site sits on the footprint of the old Collect Pond, and the leaders say the ground beneath it is too unstable for the deepest excavation the location has ever seen, the New York Post reported.
The letter lays out a stark warning: digging well below the water table at a site already known for soft, saturated soil could cause the surrounding ground to sink permanently, and once it sinks, it does not come back. The buildings in the path of that risk include small businesses, century-old structures along Baxter Street, and Chung Pak senior housing, where some of Chinatown's most elderly and vulnerable residents live.
The Chinatown jail is one piece of a $16 billion plan to close the Rikers Island Jail Complex and replace it with four borough-based facilities closer to courthouses. Former Mayor Bill de Blasio launched the initiative nearly a decade ago. The project moved slowly under his successor, Eric Adams. Now it falls to Mamdani, whose administration has signaled it intends to push forward.
Demolition of the old Manhattan Detention Complex at the White Street site is already underway. Residents have reported persistent dust, uncovered and idling trucks, and relentless noise from the dismantlement phase. The Chinatown Environmental Health Working Group has documented higher particulate matter pollution levels near the construction zone, a finding that adds a public-health dimension to the geological concerns raised in the letter.
Mamdani, who has drawn scrutiny for a pattern of controversies since taking office, including sharp criticism from Israeli leaders over his remarks about Prime Minister Netanyahu, now faces organized resistance from one of the city's most historically rooted neighborhoods on a project that could define his tenure's infrastructure legacy.
The signatories include Vic Lee, CEO and co-founder of Welcome to Chinatown Inc.; Jan Lee, co-founder of Neighbors United Below Canal; Thomas Yu, executive director of Asian Americans for Equality; and Wayne Ho, president and CEO of the Chinese-American Planning Council. Together, they represent organizations with deep ties to the community and decades of advocacy on behalf of Chinatown residents and businesses.
The letter's most pointed concern involves the buildings surrounding the jail site. Many of them rest on wooden foundations that have survived for over a century precisely because they remain submerged in water. Architect William Bialosky, cited by the leaders, has warned in an op-ed analysis that pumping groundwater during deep excavation could expose those wooden pilings to air, causing them to deteriorate and potentially destabilize the structures above.
In their letter, the community leaders put it plainly:
"The jail site sits on the soft, waterlogged ground of the old Collect Pond. The construction plan calls for the deepest excavation ever attempted on its site, digging well below the water table. The city's report warns that pumping out that water during construction can cause the surrounding ground to sink, and once it sinks, it does not come back."
They added that the buildings at risk are not abstract entries on a zoning map.
"The buildings in the danger zone are our homes, our small businesses, the historic buildings along Baxter Street, and Chung Pak senior housing, where some of our most vulnerable neighbors live."
The administration's track record of accountability on other fronts has not inspired confidence in the communities asked to bear the burden of its decisions. Mamdani's office has previously blamed staff for embarrassing missteps, a habit that does little to reassure residents who want straight answers about whether their homes are safe.
City officials have pushed back on the safety concerns. A technical report released July 20 by the NYC Department of Design and Construction, contractor Tutor Perini, and the Corrections Department outlined the engineering approach planned for the excavation. The report describes a continuous underground retaining wall formed by overlapping concrete piles, known as Secant piles, that would limit ground movement and contain groundwater within the excavation area.
The report states that "only water within the excavation area is managed, minimizing impacts to the surrounding groundwater level," and that "by containing groundwater and excavation effects within the site, the sealed-wall method reduces risks to surrounding properties and infrastructure." Construction officials acknowledged in the report that managing groundwater is critical to maintaining stability and "protecting surrounding structures."
City officials said last month they are taking all necessary precautions for "building safely below the table." The report also cited comparable Secant pile projects in the city and region, including a site at 100 11th Avenue in Chelsea, the Walt Disney Company's Hudson Square development in Manhattan, a project at 120 Fifth Avenue in Brooklyn, and the Gateway Tunnel Project.
But citing comparable projects is not the same as proving this one will go smoothly. The Chinatown site carries a unique geological burden: the old Collect Pond left behind soil conditions that differ from typical Manhattan bedrock. The leaders' letter directly references the city's own report as the source of their alarm, the very document meant to reassure them instead confirmed that ground subsidence is a recognized risk of the excavation.
Mamdani has shown a willingness to associate with figures whose judgment has drawn public criticism, including backing a congressional candidate despite deleted anti-American social media posts. Whether he will show the same willingness to listen to the people whose homes and livelihoods sit directly in the path of his administration's most ambitious construction project remains an open question.
The geological debate is not happening in a vacuum. Chinatown residents are already living with the consequences of the project's demolition phase. Reports of persistent dust emissions, uncovered trucks sitting idle near the site, and constant noise have become routine complaints. The Chinatown Environmental Health Working Group has measured higher particulate matter pollution levels in the area around the construction zone, adding a measurable health concern to what residents describe as an ongoing quality-of-life crisis.
The project, if completed, could be finished by 2032. That means years of additional construction in a neighborhood already bearing the costs of a plan conceived by a previous administration and inherited by two successors. The $16 billion price tag for the full four-facility replacement of Rikers Island makes it one of the most expensive municipal jail projects in American history.
Several questions remain unanswered. The city's report addresses excavation-site stability but does not clearly address whether the century-old wooden foundations of surrounding buildings, structures that predate modern engineering standards, have been specifically evaluated. No formal legal or regulatory challenge has been filed by the community leaders, at least not publicly. And the status of the other three borough-based facilities outside Manhattan remains unclear.
Mamdani's administration has faced repeated questions about its judgment on personnel decisions as well. His campaign hired a canvasser later arrested for threatening Jewish high school students, an episode that raised broader concerns about the vetting standards inside his political operation.
The Chinatown leaders are not asking the city to abandon the Rikers replacement plan entirely. They are asking officials to reconsider whether this particular site, with its particular geology, is the right place to attempt the deepest excavation it has ever seen, and whether the people who live there deserve more than assurances from a report that confirms the very risks they fear.
When the government's own engineering document admits the ground could sink and never recover, telling residents to trust the process is not reassurance. It is a request to gamble their homes on a bureaucracy's best guess.
