Elizabeth Street Garden Saved! Mayor Adams & Christopher Marte Strike Historic Housing Deal
The election eve surprise shocked many but whatever politics were at play here, Little Italy preserves its garden, while downtown seniors have been promised more housing units than originally planned.
On the sweltering morning of Monday June 23, as Council Member Christopher Marte led a rally to protect city retiree benefits, the news broke that another Marte battle had borne startling fruit: Elizabeth Street Garden was saved! What?!
While the retirees rally proceeded with vigorous chanting and animated statements, reporters sent texts and made calls. The early conclusion: Marte is a skilled negotiator, who with Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro’s remit to save Eric Adams mayoralty, figured out a way to preserve the garden while also building much needed affordable housing for seniors.
A serene sculpture garden on a city-owned lot in Little Italy, ESG faced eviction after New York’s highest Court, the Court of Appeals, ruled in June 2024 that the city could sell the estimated $40 million property to three developers for one dollar.
In return the developers—Pennrose and the nonprofit organizations, RiseBoro Community Partnership and Habitat for Humanity— pledged to build a 123-unit affordable rental apartment complex for senior citizens and a public park, while also renting to retail stores to cross-finance the affordability.
New York icons like the singer and poet Patti Smith, the actor Robert DeNiro and the film director Martin Scorsese sent open letters to Mayor Adams, begging him to save the cherished community space. But city officials were set on mowing it down, until today.
In a press statement, Mayor Adams said, “The best way to tackle our city’s housing crisis is to build as much affordable housing as we can. 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.”
While the original proposal would have created 123 units of affordable homes, the new agreement promises 620 homes across three sites. Additionally the park has expanded its opening hours from 8 a.m to 8 p.m., and could, the mayor said, potentially “become part of the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation.” Right now it is administered by a private, not for profit.
As of now, it’s unclear who will run the garden, but Marte said that discussions regarding the matter would be held in the coming weeks.
Marte had rushed from City Hall Park to the garden to hold a press conference there. He told reporters that the deal he signed with the mayor was historic, and also personal.
“Talking about emotions... The first community board I ever spoke at was at this community board to save ESG. That was nine years ago... I grew up six blocks away. My mom loves this garden. My dad writes poems about this garden.”
The three new sites are all located within Marte’s district, which covers most of downtown Manhattan. One site, on 22 Suffolk Street, which Marte referred to as “shovel ready” sits between Grand and Broome Streets, directly opposite the Chinese-American Planning Council Building.
The second site, 100 Gold Street, just south of the Brooklyn Bridge is actually home to the New York City Department of Housing, Preservation and Development (HPD)— the agency which controls the 20,000 square feet city-owned land that became ESG.
As it turns out, in a little reported March 5 announcement, the Adams administration proposed to redevelop 100 Gold Street into a 1,000 unit mixed-income residential development with 25 percent affordable housing.
The third site is privately owned by Kinsmen Property Group and is located just two blocks from the garden on 156-166 Bowery between Broome and Kenmare Streets. Kinsmen has agreed to include the 123 senior affordable residences as part of a rezoning of their properties. While these buildings are presently empty, they were for decades part of the Bowery Lighting District.
When asked by reporters, Marte said “A rezoning typically takes between six to nine months.” But because the community board and the mayor are supportive, he said, “we can really move quickly to develop on the site.”
Not everyone was celebrating the triple win-win-win solution on June 23, however.
“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,” Matthew Dunbar, the executive vice president of Habitat NYC and Westchester, said in a statement.
But Marte told Straus News that “every new development should be LGBTQ+ friendly,” and that he was “committed to that.”
Council Speaker Adrienne Adams called the new plan a betrayal for New Yorkers and “yet another example of this mayoral administration’s capitulation to special interests” in a statement she released on Monday.
Marte argued the special interest group is “our community.”
Joseph Reiver, the son of Allen Reiver, an art and antiques dealer, who created the space in the early 1990s, added that “It’s been unfortunate that there has been a misleading headline about the garden that only special interests and celebrities want to save the garden. That couldn’t be further from the truth.”
Reiver went on to say that cultural figures like Smith, DeNiro, and Scorse, joined thousands of people, who had sent letters to the mayor.
“I think we had 1,200,000 letters sent to the administration.” Reiver told reporters. “We had over 123 seniors, who live in this neighborhood, many of whom qualify for the housing, sent an open letter to the mayor. We had public school children from PS 130 send letters to the mayor, and we had over 300 local businesses and organizations send open letters to the mayor. So it really is a full community.”
On the day the deal was announced, sitting in a chair, under a tree, reading the book “Atlas of Extinct Countries by Giddyon Defoe” was a 33-year-old man, who lives in the area. Ryan Callahan works in software sales and comes to the garden to read.
Callahan told Straus News: “Having this garden secured is massive for the neighborhood. I mean, New York is obviously a concrete jungle, in a sense, and any bit of green space is a great place for the community.”