The Queens Facility is a cornerstone of New York City’s Borough-Based Jails Program—an initiative to replace Rikers Island with smaller, borough-based facilities closer to courts, families, and services. As part of the design–build team, ELECSYS is providing electrical design and systems integration services to support this major transformation of the City’s justice infrastructure.

Planned as an approximately 1.1 million sf facility in Kew Gardens, Queens, the complex includes detention housing, central intake and support areas, medical and mental health spaces, staff services, and building operations and maintenance functions. Delivered on an accelerated design–build schedule, the project emphasizes constructability, resilience, and long-term maintainability.

ELECSYS’s scope centers on electrical power distribution, grounding, lighting, and life-safety systems, along with the integration of security, communications, and building-management systems across the facility. This includes primary and secondary power, emergency and standby power, and distribution that supports mission-critical functions under both normal and contingency conditions.

Resilience and sustainability are key drivers. ELECSYS supports short-circuit and coordination studies, backup power planning, and infrastructure strategies intended to keep essential operations online during extreme weather or grid events. The design also incorporates high-efficiency systems and capacity for on-site renewable energy, including rooftop photovoltaic arrays and associated distribution, aligned with the project’s LEED Gold target and carbon-reduction goals.

To help shorten schedule and improve quality, the project uses modular and prefabricated elements. ELECSYS supports these approaches by standardizing equipment rooms and risers, coordinating factory-built assemblies, and planning for commissioning and system interfaces.