Elizabeth Street Garden’s Fate Decided In New NYC Housing Plan

NEW YORK CITY — Mayor Eric Adams on Monday announced a new plan that would preserve the existing garden and relocates affordable housing nearby.

In an agreement with Councilmember Christopher Marte, the city will abandon redevelopment plans for the garden and instead look to rezoning three sites in District 1 to create 620 affordable apartments.

156-166 Bowery, 22 Suffolk St. and 100 Gold St. have been chosen as the sites for the new affordable apartments.

In our efforts to preserve Elizabeth Street Garden, we have always pursued a solution that provides affordable housing without any loss to the community. Thanks to Councilmember Marte's dedication and the support from Mayor Adams, we now have a resolution that delivers even more housing while preserving the Garden," Joseph Reiver, the garden’s executive director, said in a statement.

The plan must first undergo a rezoning process for the three sites, with the city reserving the right to evict the garden if the rezoning of the three sites don't materialize.

"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," Adams said in a statement. "This is what smart, responsible leadership looks like: bringing people together to reach common sense solutions that create more housing and protect green space."

Elizabeth Street Garden will remain open to the public, with expanded access from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily.

Annemarie Gray, executive director of Open New York, called the city's decision “shameful” to abandon senior affordable housing plans at the garden 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,” Gray said. "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."

The new developments came after a years-long eviction battle involving the garden and the city. Multiple celebrities including Robert De Niro and Patti Smith called for the garden to be saved.

The original plan called for 123 affordable homes at the garden site.

Marte said the deal was 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,” he 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.”