New Yorkers may have just 12 days left to visit the Elizabeth Street Garden in Lower Manhattan.
City officials — who are pushing ahead with plans to build affordable housing for seniors on the site — issued the garden a two-week eviction notice earlier this week.
The notice could augur the end of a battle over the green space that has been brewing for more than a decade.
The garden has been operating as a semi-public site on a month-to-month lease with the city for years, and its supporters say there are better spots nearby where affordable housing can be built. Their efforts have included a massive campaign featuring thousands of letters of support from the community and endorsements from big-name celebrities like Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro and Patti Smith.
The city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development disagrees, and sees the planned development as a step toward addressing the city’s affordability crisis. The planned development includes 123 apartments, some of which will go to homeless New Yorkers.
This week’s eviction notice raises the likelihood that the city will prevail.
Ilana Maier, a spokesperson for the housing department, said in a statement that the latest developments were “a step forward for both affordable housing and community green space.”
“We’re reaffirming our commitment to solving the homelessness and affordable housing crises even when it’s politically challenging,” she added.
The nonprofit managing the site stopped paying rent as the dispute heated up, according to the agency, and currently owes approximately $100,000.
Mayor Eric Adams visited the site last month but didn’t reverse its fate. One of Adams’ signature policies is his “City of Yes” housing plan, which seeks to build as many as 109,000 new residences across the five boroughs over 15 years.
The garden has the support of a number of local politicians, including City Councilmember Chris Marte, who in 2023 signed a letter calling on the mayor to save the garden.
“What’s become clear when we organize to defend Elizabeth Street Garden is that the city isn’t actually interested in building affordable housing,” Marte said in a statement, adding that his office had been working for years with the garden to identify other places where affordable housing could be built.
“The city’s response has been to say they’ll build there, and on the garden,” he said.
HPD shot down a list of proposed alternative sites for the planned building and said it would seize every opportunity to tackle the city’s housing crisis. Agency officials said that in response to public input, the new development will include more green space.
“We continue to work with our legal team to address the eviction,” representatives for the garden said in a statement.
The garden’s supporters suffered a key legal defeat before the state’s high court earlier this year. The dispute over the property stems from an unusual agreement in 1991 between the city and Allan Reiver, the owner of a nearby antiques shop. At the time, Reiver scored a lease from the city to manage the green space, provided it was open to the public. He turned it into a quirky garden oasis with sculptures, columns and plants.
Kathleen Webster, a Little Italy resident who has been involved with community gardens in the neighborhood for decades, said she was ready for the dispute to be over.
“I understand people becoming attached to a space that is very pretty,” said Webster, who has written about the garden in the context of the housing crisis.
But she said it’s more important for older residents with ties to the neighborhood to be able to stay there.
“The Chinese elders who are offered housing in parts of New York far away from Chinatowns, who don’t speak English, would like to age in place in their own neighborhood,” she said.