Once New York City's Rikers Island correctional complex closes, the buildings will be torn down and developers will be falling all over themselves while salivating at the chance to fill the vacant land with high-rise condos, boutiques, restaurants, and pricey fitness centers. Thus turning the island into the city's next hot neighborhood or nabe, to use real estate lingo. Rikers Island will then become an extension of Manhattan--overwhelmingly white and wealthy.
Realtors will likely call it Rikersville, Rikers Manor or give it a hipper, trendier, jazzier name to lure the people with deep pockets and to cover up its unsavory past.
They won't have to worry about displacing longtime residents and businesses. There are none. The only ones affected will be the ones currently incarcerated there. And the inmates will be dispersed to supposedly easier to get to, modern community-based facilities throughout the five boroughs.
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