The city plans to remove a decommissioned jail barge from the south Bronx waterfront and replace it with a marine terminal, officials said Monday.

The Vernon C. Bain Correctional Center officially shuttered in 2023, three decades after it first opened in the waters off of Hunts Point.


What You Need To Know

  • The city plans to remove a decommissioned jail barge from the south Bronx waterfront and replace it with a marine terminal, officials said Monday

  • The new Hunts Point Marine Terminal will serve as a connection between ports along the East Coast, allowing ships to unload freight for the final leg of delivery, officials said

  • The terminal is expected to create hundreds of jobs and generate nearly $4 billion in economic impact over the next 30 years, according to officials

The new Hunts Point Marine Terminal will serve as a connection between ports along the East Coast, allowing ships to unload freight for the final leg of delivery, officials said.

“In just a few years, we will be standing here to see cargo from all around the globe being moved off our ships and onto e-bikes, barges and ferries for the last-mile delivery to all five boroughs,” Mayor Eric Adams said at a news conference Monday.

The terminal is expected to create hundreds of jobs and generate nearly $4 billion in economic impact over the next 30 years, according to officials.

“This is lowering emissions, creating jobs and creating a vibrant community here in the Bronx by boosting economic output,” the mayor added.

Prior to its closure, detainees and advocates regarded the 800-bed jail barge as a grim vestige of mass incarceration, an enduring symbol of the city’s failures to reform dangerous jails that exist on the periphery of New York, largely out of sight of most residents and tourists.

Adams on Monday described the barge as “a symbol that everything bad gets built and located in the Bronx.”

The mayor said he vowed to close and remove it after touring the site back in 2021.

“We came into office with the promise, as I indicated, [about] the Vernon C. Bain jail barge and all of the destruction that came with it,” he said. “It will be removed, and we will give renewed energy and life to this community.”