Acres of Opportunity: Reinventing Rikers Island
“The City deserves a next chapter for Rikers Island that benefits as many New Yorkers as possible, seizes the opportunity to make progress on city-wide challenges, and remembers the island’s past. ”
Over the past year, our team at Fontas Advisors has been closely engaged with the City on plans for the new modern jail facilities that will be located across the city and the closure of the Rikers Island jail complex. Through discussions with our network of elected officials, policymakers, criminal justice experts, real estate developers, city planning experts, and business leaders, we have begun to examine what the future of Rikers Island might hold. The result is our white paper, Acres of Opportunity: Reinventing Rikers Island, which you can read by clicking here.
The City deserves a next chapter for Rikers Island that benefits as many New Yorkers as possible, seizes the opportunity to make progress on city-wide challenges, and remembers the island’s past.
In this comprehensive report we:
Provide a primer on the island’s history
Review the many potential uses for its real estate
Share our predictions on the City’s path forward, including key political factors that will make the Rikers Island redevelopment project particularly challenging