A concrete barrier with the initials for the Federal Bureau of Prisons has closed 29th Street to thru traffic since 2001. It’s now used as a parking lot, according to prison officials. (Camilo Smith/The Brooklyn Ink)
By Camilo Smith
Along the southwest edge of 29th Street and Third Avenue in Sunset Park, cars dart along the shadow cast by the Gowanus Expressway. While drivers may not be able to distinguish the industrial red brick of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Metropolitan Detention Center from the other factories along the route, what’s immediately out of place is the long white concrete barrier that clumsily crosses 29th Street ending atop the sidewalk on the other end.
The barrier has been in place since just after September 11, according to city officials. It’s a security measure meant to protect the 12-story, double towers at 80 29th Street and its adjacent seven-story 100 29th Street building. The structures are respectively known as the West and East buildings that make up the Department of Justice’s MDC: Brooklyn.
Ed Ross, a Bureau of Prisons spokesman in Washington, confirmed that the access to the street in front of the detention center has been blocked for years. But members of Community Board 7 and local residents are saying enough is enough and that 29th Street, a public road, needs to have its concrete blockade removed and returned to public use.
“From a planning standpoint and from a community standpoint, it is something we view negatively,” says CB7 District Manager Jeremy Laufer. “Perhaps there are legitimate security reasons, but they’ve never been explained to this community.”
Most residents complain that the blocked street is used as a parking lot and although the blockage has been in place for nearly a decade its taken on a renewed importance. Given Brooklyn’s waterfront development initiatives, which include a planned 14-mile, multi-use waterfront greenway and a recycling center set to open next year, the concrete barricade is a reminder of transportation limitations in that section of Sunset Park’s overburdened industrial zone.
“It’s an inconvenience, not only for the community, but it’s an inconvenience for the recycling facility,” said Murad Awawdeh, a Sunset Park resident and community activist, referring to the nearly $100-million center owned by Sims Recycling of NY, which broke ground two months ago.
Laufer, the district manager, says the fact that Third Avenue is a one-way street, the 29th Street access is vital to get to the recycling center, which will sit on the edge of the Gowanus Bay once it’s complete. The blockade could create a bottleneck on Second Avenue. According to a City press release, the recycling center will function 24-hours a day, 6-days a week, and will receive drop-offs by “no more than 100 trucks per day”.
Laufer feels 29th Street was “seized” from the community, and knows the concrete barrier will cause trucks to reroute through his community, which already deals with a heavy truck presence. The area gets clogged due to the Gowanus Expressway lack of on ramps. Freight vehicles are often forced to use neighborhood streets to find highway access. Trucks making their way to the 30th Street Pier, where the Sims facility is being constructed may find that “There’s only one way in, and one way out,” after making their drop-offs, says Laufer.
The nearly 3-foot-high security barricade is made of several 10-foot-long concrete segments connected together to close the street at its crosswalk. This is a security measure for the federal prison, according to New York City Department of Transportation spokesman Scott Gastel. The facility, which opened in 1994, became famous for housing 9/11 suspects who later sued the prison, in what the media dubbed Brooklyn’s Abu Ghraib.
According to the Federal Highway Administration these so-called concrete Jersey barriers are intended to lift and redirect a vehicle that crashes into them. They have become fixtures near federal facilities throughout the country. Security experts say this form of perimeter security for government buildings increased following the September, 11 attacks. Especially for locations built near the curb or streets, “setback” distance from the street of 50-feet to 100-feet is seen as crucial for security.
“Security is a big issue,” says James Davis, spokesman for the Metropolitan Detention Center, Brooklyn located near the Sunset Park waterfront. (Camilo Smith/The Brooklyn Ink)
“Security is a big issue. Most prisons sit on a couple hundred acres of land. In the city,” says James Davis, spokesman for Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center “we don’t have that luxury.” Davis says the prolonged shutdown of the street doesn’t rest with the Bureau of Prisons or the MDC. He would not say which agency has that final decision to keep 29th Street blocked. He did confirm that the street is designated for public use, however.
Perhaps the most perplexing thing about the street closure and the thing everyone in the community notices is that the barricade has helped turn 29th Street into a private, free parking lot. “We benefit from [the closure], the fact that we have a lot of lawyers come through. We have them park here.” Davis says the street is commonly used to park visitor and staff cars, among others in the local business community.
“That doesn’t sound like security to me,” says Laufer. “If employees of the prison are using this public space as a private lot, is that considered a taxable benefit and are they paying taxes on it? he asked.
The fact 29th Street is openly used as a parking lot behind a concrete security barricade is often referenced at Sunset Park community board meetings. CB 7’s waterfront development plan created in 2007, and called a 197-a plan, mentioned a goal of opening waterfront access at 29th St. It’s one of only two access points in the neighborhood, the other being the 58th Street Pier. Sunset Park borders 2 ?-miles of waterfront, and another access point at 43rd and 51st Street is being worked on as part of Bush Terminal Pier Park, set to open within the next two years.
The Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway initiative, which plans to connect Greenpoint to Sunset Park at one point in its early design phase, focused on a path through 29th Street, but that changed earlier this fall according to Awawdeh, a local resident and organizer with environmental justice organization Uprose, “The community plan was to get the Greenway onto Second and First Avenue as soon as possible, we found out at the last meeting that it’s not possible, because the prison won’t budge on that.”
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