New York City’s notorious five-story floating jail in the Bronx will be tugged down to the bayou and scrapped for parts to make way for a new waterfront delivery hub, the Economic Development Corporation announced Wednesday.
The EDC made a deal with the company Louisiana Scrap Metal Recycling to dismantle the Vernon C. Bain Correctional Center, a 625-foot-long prison barge that served as an overflow for Rikers Island until it was decommissioned in 2023. Later this fall, the company will tug it from Hunts Point to the company’s facility in Gibson, Louisiana, where it will be dismantled and sold to steel mills and metal factories in the region. The company agreed to pay New York City $1.5 million for the scrap.
Once the barge leaves town, the city aims to transform the area of Hunts Point into a marine terminal that will handle freight from barges and boats traveling through the East River. The planned terminal is part of the city’s “Blue Highways” initiative, which seeks to remove 9,000 monthly truck trips from the city’s streets by moving cargo on waterways instead of roadways. The EDC plans to use the hub as a staging area for small electric vehicles to make deliveries in the Bronx…