Elizabeth Street Garden Is Going, Going...But Not Gone Yet as Locals Fight Development “Madness”

Sitting on a bench at the entrance of Elizabeth Street Garden, Patricia leaned forward and said, “You can’t go into a battle without hope.”

The beloved community garden faces eviction on September 10. The city, which owns the lot in Little Italy, sold the land to a group of three develpers, Pennrose, RiseBoro Community Partnership and Habitat for Humanity, for one dollar in return for their pledge to build 123 affordable housing units for seniors.

But It’s not clear if the affordable housing is actually permanent or has a sunset clause that would allow the units at some point down the road to rise to market rate.

“Why don’t you take a picture of Patricia?” Elsa Wellford proposed and sat down on the bench. Patricia covered her face with her hands, “Elsa says that because she knows I don’t like having my picture taken.”

Elsa, who is 17, smiled. She wanted to be photographed, she wanted to tell her story.

“I love this garden so much,” Elsa began. “The garden helped me through a rough time during COVID. It helped me deal with my illness.” Elsa was diagnosed with type one diabetes, a lifelong condition that can turn deadly if not monitored constantly. Elsa wears an insulin pump on one arm, and a glucose meter on the other. “The garden helped me,” she added, “because I met great people here - like Patricia.”

Patricia has been the gardener at Elizabeth Street Garden for several years now, taking care of the trees and plants that grow and blossom seemingly wild but artistically arranged in what visitors call a magical sanctuary.

After the garden lost its final case at the Court of Appeals in New York, people began writing letters to Mayor Adams, begging him to preserve the sacred 20,000 square feet of green space, which is free and open to the public seven days a week. Over 400,000 letters have been sent, including testimonials by school children and seniors, neighbors and celebrities like actor Robert DeNiro, director Martin Scorsese and poet and singer Patti Smith, who wrote that the city “is in danger of becoming a developer’s unchecked haven...”

The New York legends have been accused online for dismissing the urgent need for affordable housing.

“Totally shameful that these massively privileged people... would try to block these deeply affordable homes that the city desperately needs,” one commentator wrote to the New York Times after an article about their effort to save the garden.

Meanwhile the city has not directly answered questions on whether the developers have a sunset clause some years down the road with an option to turn it into a market rate complex. When Straus News asked the Mayor Eric Adams during his weekly press conference on Aug. 27 if the housing was going to be permanently affordable, he spoke about the housing crisis but did not answer a question about any potential sunset clause. “People are homeless... we have thousands of people with vouchers that can’t find places to live... My responsibility is to place as many people as possible inside a home.” Maria Torres-Springer, the deputy mayor who is the point person on the project, was not at the press availability that day.

No one is questioning the need for housing.The Coalition for the Homeless found that “homelessness in New York City has reached the highest level since the Great Depression. In June 2024,” the organization counted, “132,293 people slept each night in NYC shelters.” And USA FACTS found that New York has the highest rate of homelessness in the country. The question is, if the development will offer permanent affordability.

Paul Bartlett, who worked as a city planner and was on community board 2, from 1980-1985, told Straus News on Aug 28, “if after 30 years the affordable units become market rate housing, you will have lost those units. And then, how are you going to replace them? You’re just kicking the can down the road.” He sighed. “And that’s where we are now. One of the reasons we are short of affordable housing today is because a lot of the affordable housing programs had a sunset. We had a lot of programs that expired and that’s not a planning solution.”

Another point of contention is the importance of public green space in a densely populated city like New York.

In August 21, Adams signed an executive order, requiring city agencies to review their properties as potential development sites for home building, and on Tuesday he emphasized that “people say to me, don’t build it here, build it there. I say, thank you for telling me about there because I need that spot too. We need all spots.”

Haven Green, as the planned development on Elizabeth Street has named itself, promises to provide open green space for the public.

“The new space will have wonderful open space with a garden, art, and other amenities which will be determined by additional community engagement,” Ilana Maier, a press spokeswoman for the city’s Housing Preservation and Development department wrote Straus News in an email. (She did not respond to the question regarding the duration of the affordability.)

At his press availability, Adams proclaimed “we have 15,000 square feet of open space. We’re doubling the size of the open space that’s there.”

Barrett, the former city planner warns: “If you’re gonna build on every square inch, you’re gonna have a city on fire.” He recalled a decades old study on Little Italy in the 70s which noted that the old tenements that make up much of little Italy are small and hot. “You need to be able to get outside and do things and the government is doing the opposite here,” he contends.

Haven Green, which is the name the developers have given the project, promises to provide open space open to the public in the new complex.”The new pace will have have a wonderful open space with a garden, art and other amenities which will be determined by additional community engagement,” Ilana Maier, a spokesperson with the city’s department of Housing Preservation and Development, wrote in an email.

Adams in his press conference insisted, “We have 15,000 square feet of open space. We’re doubling the size of the open space that’s there.”

Digital images for Haven Green’s promised land tell a somewhat different story, park advocates say. The open space amounts to 6,700 square feet, less than half of what it is now, and includes an area underneath an overhang that park boosters say blocks out direct sunlight. Instead of sitting under a pear tree and reading a book, facing a sculpture nestled in flowers and butterflies, visitors would also be surrounded by retail stores the development intends to rent out to cross-finance the affordable housing units.

Rob Mastrianni, a musician from Brooklyn, whose Italian grandfather was raised on Mulberry Street, told Straus News on Sunday, “I think it would be a little cramped to have public space here and a building.”

Ileana, who sat a few feet away, couldn’t believe anyone would want to tear down this garden. The physician, who is originally from Romania, but lives in Pittsburgh now, exclaimed, “This is my first time here. What? I can’t believe anyone would want to destroy this place.”

Francesca, 21, was reading a book by the Spinario, a replica of Boy with Thorn, a Greco-Roman bronze sculpture of a boy pulling a thorn from the sole of his foot.

“The reason why I am so drawn to this place is because there is a lot of art here. It just feels so different from a lot of other open spaces in the city.” Francesca said. “There is something really special about having a place that was built by artists. It feels more connected to the community.”

Greg Martin and his wife Wendy, who are both seniors and come to the garden frequently, personally knew the late antique dealer Allen Reiver, who salvaged the abandoned city lot in the early 1990s.

“I remember what this place looked like,” Martin told Straus News, “when I worked at our family company at 80 Spring Street. My walks on the hood revealed a vacant lot with varying amounts of accumulating debris.”

“What a difference Allen made for the quality of life not just in Little Italy and Soho, but for all New Yorkers and visitors alike. Someone has to bring relief to this situation because it’s truly unique. It’s. bit of Florence or France..It’s something the city could not construct on its own.

”Even if they come to some kind of awkward compromise, and erect a public space, it will dwarf in comparison.”

He added, “There are other options available to make space for the homeless, which is much needed, without a doubt. But to destroy this, is really a madness.”