NEW YORK (1010 WINS) -- A years-long fight to save Elizabeth Street Garden proved successful Monday, as City Hall announced a deal to preserve the park while also increasing the number of affordable housing units that had been planned for the site.
The current garden in Nolita has existed since the early 1990s on an acre between Spring and Prince streets. It was more than a decade ago, in 2013, that plans to build affordable housing there first materialized, setting off the prolonged legal fight by the community to preserve it.
Mayor Eric Adams said Monday that City Hall had signed an agreement with Councilmember Christopher Marte to create 620 new affordable homes in the district.
As part of the agreement, the city will permanently pause plans for redevelopment of the garden, while Marte will support rezoning three sites in Council District 1 to create the new affordable housing: 156-166 Bowery, 22 Suffolk St. and 100 Gold St.
Adams said the 620 unit number is five times more than the 123 units that had been planned for the site of the garden.
Under the agreement, Elizabeth Street Garden will remain a community garden, and the city will expand access, requiring it to remain open for public use from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily.
Over the years, the effort to save the park has found support among a number of big names, including Robert De Niro, Martin Scorsese and Patti Smith.
Adams said the deal is “what smart, responsible leadership looks like: bringing people together to reach common sense solutions that create more housing and protect green space.”
In a statement, Marte described the deal as a “win-win for our community.”
“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,” Marte said. “And with this historic agreement with Mayor Eric Adams, this will be the largest influx of new, permanently affordable housing in Lower Manhattan in decades.”
Joseph Reiver—who is the garden's executive director and whose father created the garden in an empty lot—said in part in a statement: "My father sowed the foundation of the Garden, which, even through more than a decade of duress, has grown into an iconic sanctuary treasured by people from across the city and the world. It’s been a profound honor to expand upon that legacy, to trust in the path, and to listen to the Garden as my guide. With the City now embracing our proposal, we remain fully devoted to ensuring that Elizabeth Street Garden is preserved 4 of 9 in its entirety, with all of its enduring magic as we know and love in perpetuity."
The decision overturned a City Council senior housing plan. The outcome frustrated Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, who said the move "betrayed" New Yorkers during a housing crisis and was "yet another example of this mayoral administration’s capitulation to special interests."
"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," the council speaker said in a statement.