After a decade-long fight, the city is leaving the Elizabeth Street Garden intact.
First Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro on Monday announced in a virtual news briefing that the city has, instead, reached an agreement with Council member Chris Marte to rezone three other sites that would net 620 affordable units, or more than 400 apartments than were planned for the garden site.
Mastro said Marte has agreed to support rezonings at 22 Suffolk Street, 156-166 Bowery Street and 100 Gold Street, in exchange for preserving the Elizabeth Street Garden as a city park.
Even though housing was already planned on some of these sites — including the Gold Street site, where the Adams administration announced plans for more than 1,000 units — Mastro said the rezonings would be dead on arrival without Marte’s support. Marte, the local Council member, previously said he was opposed to the Gold Street plan. He was also the only Manhattan Council member to vote against the City of Yes for Housing Opportunity.
“This incredible win-win for our community shows exactly why we should never give up,” Marte said in a statement. “Since the beginning of this fight almost a decade ago, we’ve been saying that we can save community gardens and build new affordable housing.
The tradeoff comes on the eve of the Democratic primary, in which Marte faces three opponents. When asked how the agreement over the rezonings will be binding if they outlast Marte, Mastro said preservation of the garden is contingent on those rezonings moving forward. If they don’t, the city can use the garden for something else.
The deal also comes after years of litigation over the future of the site, where PennRose, Habitat NYC and Riseboro planned to build 123 affordable units for senior citizens. After securing a legal victory in 2024, the city issued an eviction notice to the garden, which is city-owned land that has been leased since the 1990s. Mastro joined the Adams administration a few weeks later and paused the project, saying that he wanted to first review the plans.
“To be truly effective in government, you have to have a head and a heart. You have to listen to communities, you have to serve the public,” Mastro said during Monday’s press briefing.
The Daily News highlighted in April that Mastro has ties to attorney Norman Siegel and Adams’ former chief of staff, Frank Carone, who have supported opponents of the housing development, known as Haven Green. Opposition also received high-profile help from celebrities Robert De Niro, Martin Scorsese and Patti Smith, who called on the mayor to reconsider the development.
The nonprofit that fought against the development said it hopes the agreement to preserve the garden sets a “new precedent for how community gardens are valued and protected.”
“The Garden has been misunderstood by those who believe it must be sacrificed to meet housing needs,” Joseph Reiver, executive director of the nonprofit Elizabeth Street Garden, which manages the park, wrote in a newsletter sent out Monday. “But doing so perpetuates a false choice, one I hope we can now leave behind in light of what this work has affirmed.”
During Mastro’s review, Mayor Eric Adams insisted that he still supported Haven Green and wasn’t necessarily forgoing housing on one site for the sake of another. But that is exactly what ended up happening: The administration jettisoned plans for housing on a city-owned, already rezoned site that it could prepare for construction in exchange for three sites that will need to go through the months-long land use review process.
Mastro also acknowledged that the agreement with the City Council member did not settle the amount of rent that the garden nonprofit still owes the city.
“We are stunned and deeply saddened to learn of the City’s attempt to abandon more than 10+ years of work towards deeply affordable, LGBTQ-friendly housing for seniors and publicly accessible green space in one of Manhattan’s most expensive neighborhoods, without notice or additional information on plans for the new site,” PennRose said in a statement. “Today is heartbreaking for housing advocates and policy — and all those in favor of a more inclusive and equitable New York City — but we remain committed to working closely with HPD to create critical housing opportunities for low-income New Yorkers.”
The decision to abandon Haven Green also comes as the city’s Charter Revision Commission is reviewing proposals to revamp the city’s land use review process to potentially blunt a local Council member’s ability to unilaterally kill a rezoning in their district. Such a change would potentially eliminate the need for the deal made with Marte.
The cancellation of Haven Green could have broader implications for developers considering partnering with the city on projects. The fact that the administration reversed course after fighting and winning the ability to move forward with the project could signal a new risk for those sinking time and money into a site.
“If there was any doubt already, the official policy of the Adams administration is that elite comfort is more important than sufficient homes for vulnerable elderly people,” Annemarie Gray, executive director of Open New York, said in a statement. “The cancellation of affordable senior housing at Haven Green is shameful, and only reflects the corruption, dysfunction, and incompetence of this administration.”
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The Daily Dirt: Eric Adams says “nothing has changed yet” about Elizabeth Street Housing project
Eviction notice issued for Elizabeth Street Garden
