City eyes 40-story prison downtown

The de Blasio administration is considering building a high-rise jail complex in the heart of lower Manhattan, officials confirmed Thursday.

As part of the city’s sweeping plan to close its violence-plagued jail facility on Rikers Island, the nine-story government building at 80 Centre St. could be gutted and replaced with a new detention center that could rise as high as 40 stories, the Mayor’s Office said.

The complex might even include affordable-housing units — although no details on how close residents would be to prisoners were provided.

City Council Speaker Corey Johnson touted the plan Thursday night.

“We want a site that is close to the courthouses — which this is — and is a site that you can build a facility that is large enough to house the population of people [who] are typically ending up on Rikers Island from the borough of Manhattan,” he said on NY1.

The 700,000-square-foot Louis J. Lefkowitz State Office Building, which opened in 1930, is currently home to court and government offices, including the Office of the City Clerk and its Marriage Bureau.

The city is already considering tapping another borough site as part of the Rikers shutdown plan: the nearby Manhattan Detention Complex, aka The Tombs, at 125 White St.

Some officials, however, have questioned whether that site is too small for the proposed project.

“We are considering two potential options for a facility in Manhattan as part of our plan to close Rikers Island, and are engaging with the community to gather input,” said Natalie Grybauskas, a spokeswoman for Mayor de Blasio.

Johnson said, “No decision is final,” adding that the city is still “looking . . . at The Tombs site to see if there is a way to configure it to make it work.”

De Blasio last year announced plans to close Rikers Island within a decade, with its remaining detainees transferred to new jails in each borough but Staten Island.

The mayor has said, though, that before the troubled Rikers facility near La Guardia Airport can be shut down, the city must first reduce its current 8,000-plus inmate population to about 5,000.

Other sites eyed by the city for new or revamped jail facilities include: the Brooklyn Detention Center on Atlantic Avenue, the Queens Detention Center in Kew Gardens and the NYPD Tow Pound in Mott Haven, The Bronx.

Each would have to undergo a review process with public hearings before any action is taken.

The prospect of taking in prisoners from Rikers has predictably prompted residents in the affected areas to oppose the move.

Bronx Councilmen Ruben Diaz Sr. and Rafael Salamanca earlier this year blasted the idea of a Mott Haven facility.

De Blasio has been getting pressure from the Cuomo administration about conditions at Rikers and the city’s plan to deal with it.

“The current plan to close Rikers Island jail on a 10-year timeline is wholly unacceptable and repugnant to federal and state constitutional principles,” Cuomo’s chief counsel, Alphonso David, said in a statement in February.

We want a site . . . large enough to house h the population of people typically ending up on Rikers Island. City Council Speaker Corey Johnson (left)