Appellate Court Gives Downtown Community Garden a Few More Months
The embattled Elizabeth Street Garden has been granted a new else on life – at least until February. Days before the administration of Mayor Eric Adams had been planning to padlock the facility and begin demolishing it in preparation for a new affordable housing development known as Haven Green, a judge in the Appellate Division of the New York State Supreme Court’s First Judicial Department issued a stay, barring the City from taking possession of the premises until further hearings could determine whether the grassroots organization has legal standing for further appeals.
The site (a publicly owned lot that connects Elizabeth and Mott Streets at mid-block, north of Spring Street and south of Prince Street) has been the focus of a decade of controversy that began with the 2014 announcement by the City’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) that it planned to create permanently affordable housing for low-income seniors there. Since 1991, the half-acre parcel has been maintained and improved as a de facto park by local residents, who have come to regard it as a treasured amenity. Critics of the plan were unappeased by a compromise vision that included both affordable housing for seniors and a new (albeit smaller) public garden, which would shrink from approximately 20,000 square feet to roughly 6,700 square feet.
In recent months, the fate of the Elizabeth Street Garden has been whipsawed by dueling court decisions. The prospect of stopping the plan with litigation seemed to fade in June, when the State’s highest court upheld a lower court ruling that allowed the City to proceed. But after HPD obtained legal permission to evict the community group that has managed the space for decades, an appellate judge agreed to consider a separate set of arguments, and then temporarily prohibited the agency from continuing with the plan – until October 30. As that deadline loomed, the Appellate Division of the First Judicial Department weighed in, giving Elizabeth Street Garden advocates until February to show why HPD should not be allowed to take possession of the site.
A spokesman for City Hall responded to this development by noting, “as over 2,100 seniors sleep in shelters tonight, the well-housed plaintiffs and attorneys behind the Elizabeth Street Garden can rest well knowing they have prevented the City from building affordable housing for seniors and public green space for at least another few months. We remain undeterred and will continue this decades-long fight for what is right and what is needed – housing for some of our most vulnerable neighbors.”
The Elizabeth Street Garden leaders replied in a statement, “the Mayor and the First Deputy Mayor can still choose to work with us on developing the private site proposal in order to provide the needed affordable housing at no expense to the community whatsoever.” This was a reference to an alternate plan that would build rent-protected dwellings on one or more nearby sites, while keeping the Elizabeth Street Garden intact. HPD says that it hopes to develop affordable homes at these sites in addition to – not instead of – doing so at the Elizabeth Street Garden.
The proposed design for Haven Green (right) calls for 123 units of affordable senior housing, along with publicly accessible open space. The apartments will be set aside for low-income and extremely low-income seniors, including 30 percent for formerly homeless seniors. These terms are set to apply for at least 60 years, with financial conditions that are designed to “structurally incentivize and ensure extension of affordability far beyond the initial regulatory term,” according to the non-profit developers.