Back to Elizabeth Street Garden :-)

From *The Spirit*: Elizabeth Street Garden Saved After Long Preservation Fight It took a resolute and shrewd Christopher Marte; a flip-flopping Eric Adams; an unexpected ally in Randy Mastro; and a strategic surrender by Mayor Mamdani but, almost unbelievably, it’s done—and the park lovers won! 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. 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](https://www.otdowntown.com/news/elizabeth-street-garden-faces-death-again-this-time-by-mamdani-MF5241952) 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](https://www.otdowntown.com/news/elizabeth-street-garden-is-saved-again-by-mayor-adams-randy-mastro-LI5291580) of the garden, described the settlement as [a win-win solution](https://www.otdowntown.com/news/elizabeth-street-garden-saved-mayor-adams-christopher-marte-strike-historic-housing-deal-EA4750431). “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”…