Elizabeth Street Garden Saved After Long Preservation Fight

Over a hundred people gathered at the Elizabeth Street Garden on Saturday to celebrate its permanent preservation after a decades-long battle against plans to turn the space into affordable housing and luxury retail space.

“Elizabeth Street Garden lives on,” said Norman Siegel, a civil rights attorney and former executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, who has fought nine separate legal battles on behalf of the garden’s nonprofit over the course of eight years.

Siegel praised the community effort. “Nobody can do this alone, it’s a team effort,” the attorney said to a cheering crowd.

But one local resident, Jennifer Romine, told Straus News despite the historic victory a “false narrative” persists that “selfish rich people” succeeded in “pushing out affordable housing.”

The serene sculpture garden sits on a city-owned 20,000-square-foot lot on Elizabeth Street in Little Italy. In 2024, the garden community faced eviction after New York’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, granted the city the right to sell the land to a group of developers for one dollar (the estimated value of the Downtown Manhattan real estate was about $40 million). In return, the developers, Pennrose, RiseBoro Community Partnership, and Habitat for Humanity, pledged to build 123 affordable housing units for seniors.

Haven Green, as the project was called, was slated to cost over $80 million. It would have included a public park, commercial space for one of the developers, the metro-area headquarters for Habitat for Humanity, and, most importantly, luxury retail stores to cross-finance the affordability.

Shortly before the mayoral election, the Adams administration changed direction and designated the garden “unequivocally and permanently” as parkland. The move abruptly halted construction because any new development on parkland must first be approved by the state legislature through a lengthy process known as alienation.

The decision was widely seen as a last-minute effort to protect Elizabeth Street Garden from Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who vowed to evict the garden once in office. The developers pushed back and filed a lawsuit, accusing the city of illegally blocking construction.

That lawsuit was dropped last week, allowing the garden to remain in the hands of New York’s Parks Department. During a press conference in the Bronx on Wednesday, Mayor Mamdani blamed former Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro for making it “nearly impossible for any future administration to be able to fulfill a vision of building housing on the Elizabeth Street Garden site.”

The mayor confirmed that the city would build the affordable homes on two other sites the Adams administration had proposed as alternatives: 22 Suffolk Street and 100 Gold Street.

Council Member Christopher Marte, a longtime supporter of the garden, described the settlement as a win-win solution. “For years, people were told they had to choose between protecting one of our neighborhood’s most cherished green spaces and building desperately needed affordable housing. This agreement proves that with creativity and a willingness to listen, New York City can do both,” his statement read.

”It’s Mind-Boggling How These Decisions Were Made”

But a neighbor who lives next to the garden inside one of the Little Italy Restoration Apartments, also known as LIRA, part of Section 8 housing, told Straus News that even though the legal battle has been won, the “false narrative” lingers.

“There’s been a coordinated misinformation campaign,” Romine explained, “that selfish rich people were trying to screw over a bunch of seniors.”

Romine noted that the media was reporting “celebrities” saved the garden. When the community faced eviction, over one million people wrote letters to then-Mayor Adams begging him to preserve the green space, including actor Robert De Niro, director Martin Scorsese, and poet and singer Patti Smith.

De Niro wrote that supporting “affordable housing” should be as important as “preserving the character of our neighborhoods,” while Smith warned that New York was “in danger of becoming a developer’s unchecked haven.”

“All the media reporting I’ve seen is about celebrities,” Romine fumed. “Martin Scorsese grew up on Elizabeth Street. It’s a historic district. He recognized that this is a place where the community has gathered for generations. And that this was a land grab. It was all about real estate.”

Romine pointed out that children from the neighboring public school, P.S. 130, wrote letters, alongside “low income seniors, families, artists, small businesses, all kinds of people.”

She described the group of supporters as “very diverse,” noting that the green space is also used by people who cannot afford restaurants to eat their brown bag lunches.

“The choice of this site was never about affordable housing, it was always about the retail space that people don’t talk about. The developer’s plans for the mini malls on both sides of the garden,” Romine said.

Another aspect the media completely ignored, Romine lamented, was that the development would have swallowed up half of the private courtyard that belongs to the LIRA building and borders the garden via an 80-foot fence.

Built in 1981 through an Italian- and Chinese-American immigrant-led coalition, LIRA’s original deed required the city to keep the neighboring lot exclusively for community recreation. Romine blamed former Council Member Margaret S. Chin for pushing a “back-room deal” with developers that bypassed community input and carved into LIRA’s private courtyard to satisfy the deed and its demand for recreational green space for the new project.

“It’s just mind-boggling,” Romine said, “how these decisions were made without consulting any members of the community.”

John Just, an artist who regularly visits the garden to read and journal, told Straus News that he was born and raised in New York, but lived in Hawaii for 22 years before returning.

“I returned a year ago to take care of my elderly parents,” Just said. “And if I didn’t have this garden as my oasis this past year, I don’t know if I would be able to cope with life in New York City.”

He expressed relief that the city found alternative locations to build affordable housing. “If they are going to build housing for the elderly as part of the agreement to maintain this, it’s a win-win for all people,” Just said.

The garden is cherished by New Yorkers from all over the city. Last week, over 400 people attended a free outdoor movie night featuring the 1989 Japanese animated fantasy film Kiki’s Delivery Service, written, produced, and directed by Hayao Miyazaki.

It was the first time the 19-year-old Queens resident and artist Amir Toma visited the garden. She expressed surprise that anyone would want to dismantle it.

“I found out about this garden from my friend,” Toma said. “I’m so happy it’s open. I can’t believe they were gonna get rid of this beautiful garden. I want to come back with my sketchbook and draw. It’s the perfect place to be quiet,” she said.