Mayor Eric Adams has announced plans to preserve Nolita’s Elizabeth Street Garden and instead build approximately 620 affordable homes across three other locations, effectively scrapping a senior housing project that had been planned for nearly a decade on the garden site.
The city announced Monday it will “permanently pause plans” for Haven Green, a redevelopment of the 1-acre community garden into 123 units of affordable senior housing and 14,000 square feet of public space. The project, which was chosen for development in 2017, would have also included dozens of apartments for formerly homeless people.
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But after local residents and celebrities spoke out against the redevelopment of the city-owned Elizabeth Street Garden, Randy Mastro, Mayor Adams’s newly appointed first deputy mayor, rethought the project.
Instead, the city has proposed building more than 620 affordable homes on three other sites, while preserving Elizabeth Street Garden and “making it a publicly available garden for all New Yorkers to enjoy,” the announcement said. Under the new plan, the park could become part of the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation.
However, the rezonings could take months, or even years, of planning before land-use reviews can begin, meaning the process will likely outlast Adams’s first term, Gothamist reported.
“The best way to tackle our city’s housing crisis is to build as much affordable housing as we can,” Mayor Adams said in a statement Monday. “The agreement announced today will help us meet that mission by creating more than five times the affordable housing originally planned while preserving a beloved local public space and expanding access to it.”
Elizabeth Street Garden stretches from Elizabeth to Mott streets in a midblock lot between Prince and Spring streets. It is owned by the city but privately leased to a nonprofit organization that allows public access on the site.
Years of back and forth between community groups opposed to new housing developments and those in favor of fixing the city’s housing crisis led to some backlash against the announcement.
Politicians and community leaders spoke out against the mayor’s new plans on Monday, saying that the Haven Green project was vital for senior housing in the city. More than 300,000 older adults are currently on waitlists for federally subsidized affordable housing, as the New York Times has reported.
“Amidst a severe housing and affordability crisis, Mayor Adams, First Deputy Mayor Mastro and their administration have betrayed New Yorkers who are in desperate need of affordable homes,” Speaker Adrienne Adams said in a statement Monday.
“The mayor is not only overturning a housing approval by the Council from six years ago, but also denying homes to older adults, as he fails to address our housing crisis with this decision,” Speaker Adams added.
Annemarie Gray, executive director of nonprofit Open New York, also spoke out against the new housing plan.
“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,” Gray said in a statement. “It’s fitting that this would happen on the hottest day of the year.
“After a dozen years of work from two administrations in collaboration with Habitat for Humanity, Eric Adams and Randy Mastro have decided to throw that all away,” Gray added. “The cancellation of affordable senior housing at Haven Green is shameful, and only reflects the corruption, dysfunction and incompetence of this administration.”
Under the city’s new plan, Councilmember Christopher Marte of New York City Council District 1 will “advance rezoning efforts across three sites” in the district — including 156-166 Bowery, 22 Suffolk Street and 100 Gold Street — as part of the project, according to the announcement.
The site at 156-166 Bowery comprises 15,000 square feet, and would be rezoned to admit at least 123 units of affordable apartments for seniors, “alone totaling the same number of units as originally planned for the garden,” the announcement said.
The city will also move to rezone a city-owned lot at 22 Suffolk Street, which covers approximately 15,500 square feet, and would be used to create roughly 200 units of all-affordable housing, according to the announcement.
Finally, the two sites will be joined by 100 Gold Street, which is set to feature 1,000 new homes including at least 300 units of affordable housing, the announcement said.
Joseph Reiver, whose father founded Elizabeth Street Garden in 1991 and who now runs the garden’s nonprofit organization, wrote a letter Monday in favor of Mayor Adams’s announcement, saying the garden has been “saved.”
“The garden has been misunderstood by those who believe it must be sacrificed to meet housing needs,” Reiver wrote. “But doing so perpetuates a false choice, one I hope we can now leave behind in light of what this work has affirmed.”
Isabelle Durso can be reached at idurso@commercialobserver.com.