Corrections Department Makes a Break From Downtown to Queens
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The city’s Department of Corrections is escaping from downtown Manhattan to Queens, planning to take 120,000 square feet in the former headquarters of the Bulova Watch Company at 75-20 Astoria Boulevard, a spokesman for the Department of Citywide Administrative Services confirmed.
Corrections, led by Commissioner Martin Horn, expects to vacate its home at 60 Hudson Street in Lower Manhattan, part of an effort to locate closer to the prison on Rikers Island, according to Corrections spokesman Stephen Morello.
The Bulova building, owned by Blumenfeld Development Group, is a sprawling low-rise Art Deco structure that once housed Bulova’s manufacturing operation and offices. Asking rents are around $35 a foot, according to Blumenfeld’s Web site.
16 Park Avenue
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I think it is a very good idea. After all, why should the employees be treated any better than the inmates?
Does this deal pass the smell test?
Whose brilliant idea was this - to make it as difficult as possible for loyal City workers to get to work via a reasonable commute, and in a timely manner, after dropping off the kid(s) at daycare or school, and schlepping to a site that is not a transit hub - especially from Staten Island! Then making the return trip. NYC ain't just about the corporate and real estate worlds. The importance of the little people who keep the City running must be respected by offering them work sites that are accessible to workers from all boroughs. This move is going to cost Correction some damn good workers, who are already looking for other jobs. To get to work on time, those coming from a long distance will have to get up a hour earlier, affecting productiveness and costing the City in their use of sick days. And if they decide to drive rather than use public transit, that's going to hit them and their families in the pocketbook. Sometimes it's about more than the cheaper cost of square footage. Re-think this foolish move.
The Department of Correction reminds me of the Taliban. If they do not achieve their goals on the first of many failed attempts, they keep trying untill they achieve their goals regardless of the cost effectiveness or inconvenience to all involved. Employee retention is not important, nor are the concerns of those involved a consideration. Forbid the thought of actually getting invaluable input from those that will be be forced to make the sacrifices to meet those ill concieved and cost extravagant ends. All this being said to say that this location was first "Floated as a Trial Balloon" but failed when a new site for the Correction Training Academy (now located at Metropolitan Ave) was being sought. So, once again comes to play, the "Taliban Justice" mehtod of accomplishing an empty headed goal. I feel for those of you who still must endure the heavy handed dictates of this backward looking way of achieving nothing positive. I look back with Glee to the fact that I retired with a degree of sanity and realized that there is life after "Correction" and that "70 Vestal Virgins" could be somewhat problematic at this point.
For anyone attuned to the Real Estate market, watching what the City is doing with its Correction Department is just absolutely delicious. In the midst of the City’s chest-thumping declarations of “going green,” it couldn’t find a less green building to house its “bad boys.” Out on the bucolic Grand Central Parkway (just as well the NYS Thruway) in a densely populated neighborhood of one and two family homes sits the Bulova building. Far, far from any mode of public transportation, its sole nod to rational access is a private jitney service to the nearest subway over in Jackson Heights, Queens.
Far from up-lifting the businesses of a depressed neighborhood, the City threatens to overrun a quiet neighborhood with hundreds of parked cars. Current businesses in the Bulova are rumored fleeing ahead of the encroachment of the Rikers penal system onto the mainland. The department will be toting along onto the northern Queens electric grid one of the City’s biggest computer systems; and electric cooling systems to prevent meltdown. Remember the blackout of 2006? This is sure to depress property values in the area.
This all brings to mind on this, the fifth anniversary of its start, the war in Iraq. After winning the war to enthrone Corrections in Queens, no one has a plan for what happens next.
Hundreds of former straphangers in this department will now be gas-guzzling, motorized commuters from all over the tri-state region. Replacing their predecessors in the Bulova at approximately twice or more their former density, even the City’s fire laws will be strained to allow this occupancy (“Happy Land” anyone?).
And so, a quiet and unsuspecting neighborhood in Queens awaits the City’s own version of “Shock and Awe.”
I think its a great move! New things to look forward too, DIFFERENT PLACE! DIFFERENT ATMOSHPERE!! We need to just all get along and create a HEALTHY WORKING ENVIRONMENT! TEAMWORK!..STOP COMPLAINING AND BE MORE POSITIVE !!!
WONDERFUL MOVE!!, I think people's comments against this move are just workers or CO's living in other boroughs, if they don't like it then go back to the Island,there are plenty of new civilians and CO's that can do the same "nothing" job. Also for the people that don't know the area in question, is a middle class area with plenty of parking space and major highways all around. GREAT MOVE FROM THE DEPT OF CORRECTIONS!!do what's best to the interest of the department.
Perhaps the author of the last two postings OWNS the Bulova building.