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Q&A
NYPD discusses loss of Manhattan tow pound and efforts to find new location
1:34:47
·
150 sec
Council Member Salaam inquires about the loss of tow pound capacity in Manhattan, and Josh Levin, Director of Legislative Affairs for NYPD, provides a detailed response on the department's efforts to address this issue.
- Levin explains that the loss of the Manhattan tow lot was due to a 2021 amendment to the Hudson River Park Act, which required NYPD to cease occupancy of a 200,000 square foot space.
- He outlines the department's proactive efforts to find a new location, including exploring automated and surface options, with potential costs ranging from $334 million to $500 million.
- Levin highlights the challenges of finding suitable space in Manhattan due to limited real estate and high costs, and mentions ongoing collaboration with DCAS to explore potential locations and repurpose existing facilities.
Yusef Salaam
1:34:47
So the NYPD has previously cited to the loss of tow pound capacity in Manhattan as the reason for decreasing rates of vehicle towing in recent years.
1:34:59
Can the department speak to the need for more space to tow illegally parked vehicles and what steps has the NYPD taken to obtain a new pound location?
1:35:10
Many, many, many, many steps.
1:35:12
We will be
Josh Levin
1:35:13
the first to agree that it is important for us to have this pound capacity straight up.
1:35:19
So just by a way a little bit of a background, we had to the state budget passed in 2021 the twenty twenty twenty twenty one budget.
1:35:29
The Hudson River Park Act, which was amended, which required us to cease our occupancy of the tow lot that we had there.
1:35:37
That was over 200,000 square feet.
1:35:40
It's a lot of space.
1:35:42
And so since then, our capital project scope development was undertaken between January of nineteen and March of twenty twenty in anticipation of having to vacate the pier.
1:35:52
So we proactively started looking for locations.
1:35:54
But as I explained earlier, it's an island.
1:35:58
There's only so much real estate.
1:35:59
It's one of the densest urban environments in the world.
1:36:02
Any council member in Manhattan, you wanna identify a space in your district.
1:36:07
Right?
1:36:07
For us to put a toe, we'd be more happy to more than happy to do a site evaluation.
1:36:11
But we've explored automated.
1:36:13
We've explored surface options to replace all of that.
1:36:17
Some of the costs didn't work out, had a cost between 334,000,000, 5 hundred million.
1:36:23
But I think the important thing is we are continually and actively engaged with DCAST to explore locations in Manhattan, could meet our operational need, including evaluation of other city sites that hopefully we could maybe repurpose or use.
1:36:39
We're also repurposing other department facilities.
1:36:42
So although they can't really be used for a tow, because I think 90% of all vehicles are picked up from the tow lot, about 90%.
1:36:50
So there's a lot of back and forth and the trucks are wide.
1:36:53
We're even looking at other department facilities where we could put long term storage cars.
1:36:58
Cars that are connected to like an ongoing criminal case that don't have to be moved in and out constantly.
1:37:02
So we're a % aware of this.
1:37:04
Nobody wants more toast space than we do.
1:37:06
It's a very tough circumstance that we're in though.
1:37:10
So that's all the work that we've done and we continue to do work to try to isolate and locate it at a new tow facility.