DDC plans for the new 1,040-bed Manhattan jail to be built at the site of the former Manhattan Detention Complex on White Street in Chinatown. With a 697,000-sq-ft zoning floor area, the building would also include below-grade parking for 125 vehicles and ground level community and commercial space. 

City records show Tutor Perini beat out one other shortlisted team, Transformative Reform Group, for the work. The contractor still must finalize terms and pricing with DDC. The agency expects the process will wrap up in the spring, DDC representative Ian Michaels tells ENR. 

“As soon as we have an official award and contract with the design-build firm, there will be robust community and design engagement for the duration of the project,” he adds.

DDC also selected Tutor Perini for the first of the new borough-based jail design-build contracts last year, worth $2.95 billion for the Brooklyn facility. 

Improved Contract Terms

Tutor Perini CEO Ronald Tutor said in a Nov. 6 earnings call with investors that the contractor’s more recent and prospective civil projects have improved contract terms compared to those it booked several years ago, and pointed to the Brooklyn jail project as an example. The initial terms were “so onerous” that the contractor wrote to city officials that it would not bid under the conditions. But a few months later, he said, city officials wrote back agreeing to make terms better for contractors.

“Literally every onerous term has been eliminated,” Tutor said.

Earlier this year, DDC announced it awarded a $3.9-billion contract to Leon D. DeMatteis Construction Corp. for the Queens jail project and a $2.9-billion contract to Transformative Reform Group, a team led by SLSCO Ltd. and Sciame Construction LLC, for the Bronx jail project. 

The Manhattan jail is the last of the projects to reach this stage. Officials had initially issued a request for qualifications for the work in 2021, but decided in 2023 that they would try again based on feedback from the industry and changes in the construction market following the rise of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Demolition of the former detention complex is already underway. DDC previously awarded a $125.2-million contract to Gramercy Group Inc. for that work.