Mayor Adams on Monday killed a long-stalled plan to build affordable apartments for senior citizens in Manhattan’s Elizabeth Street Garden, a reversal that stoked outrage from housing advocates but is bound to be celebrated by the Hollywood celebs and A-listers who rallied behind preserving the green space.
Though the administration is abandoning the Little Italy garden redevelopment, Randy Mastro, Adams’ first deputy mayor, told reporters City Hall is moving forward with a plan B to build the blueprint’s 123 affordable units for seniors on a nearby lot on the Bowery.
Mastro said the administration has secured support from City Councilman Chris Marte to rezone the Bowery lot to pave the way for the construction — a critical step because of the Council’s practice of deferring to local representatives on development decisions.
Marte — a frequent housing development opponent whose district includes the Elizabeth St. Garden — also committed to supporting two other rezonings to build roughly an additional 500 affordable units in the area, Mastro said.
“This is a win-win,” Mastro said. “This is a win for those in the local community who love that garden, but it’s surely also a win for affordable housing advocates and those who want to see more affordable housing built.”
Barry Williams / New York Daily News
Mayor Eric Adams and First Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro. (Barry Williams / New York Daily News)
Under an agreement reached with Marte and the garden’s supporters, Mastro said the green space will need to be open to the public every day between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. In a statement, Adams called the outcome an example of “smart, responsible leadership.”
Joseph Reiver, the executive director of the nonprofit running the city government-owned garden, said in a statement it’s “surreal” to know the green space “is saved.”
“With the city now embracing our proposal, we remain fully devoted to ensuring that Elizabeth Street Garden is preserved in its entirety, with all of its enduring magic as we know and love in perpetuity,” he said.
The projects meant to supplant the garden redevelopment will still need to go through the city’s lengthy rezoning processes, which can take years. The Elizabeth St. Garden site, by contrast, had this spring been cleared for development after a decade of delays.
“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,” City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams said in a statement.
Marte is facing a competitive primary challenge in Tuesday’s election, and his support for the rezonings would become moot if he isn’t reelected.
To boot, the Bowery lot and one of the other sites referenced by Mastro, 100 Gold St., have already since previously been identified for housing development.
The third site, 22 Suffolk St. — which the Daily News first reported this spring Mastro was eyeing as a potential plan B for the Elizabeth St. Garden project — is the only new proposal floated as part of Monday’s announcement. Mastro said the city’s looking to build approximately 200 new affordable units on the Suffolk Street lot, which was once supposed to become a public school.
The mayor’s move is certain to be lauded by the high-profile supporters of keeping the garden intact, including celebrities like Robert De Niro and Martin Scorcese.
Frank Carone, Adams’ ex-chief of staff and longtime political confidant who has provided pro bono strategy help for the celebrity garden supporters, celebrated the mayor’s announcement. “It’s a win!” he said in a text.
The announcement comes after Adams — who touts himself as a pro-housing mayor — has for years maintained that the Elizabeth St. Garden redevelopment needed to move forward.
As the city’s housing crisis remains severe with skyrocketing rents and a dearth of vacant apartment, Adams just in September argued against relocating the senior housing project to another nearby site, saying, “People often say, ‘Well, why don’t you move it down the block?’ And I keep trying to tell people I need that property down the block, too.”
Four Adams administration officials who have worked on the Elizabeth Street Garden project told The News they were dismayed by the mayor’s reversal, arguing he’s ditching a decade of work.
Barry Williams/New York Daily News
Patti Smith performs in support of Elizabeth Street Garden in April. (Barry Williams/ New York Daily News)
After supporting the plan for years, Adams had a change in tone in April, when he tasked Mastro, a controversial attorney and alum of the Giuliani administration, with conducting a new “review” of the Elizabeth Street Garden project, which is known as “Haven Green.” Adams’ change of heart came just after his administration finally secured court permission to start the redevelopment of the garden.
Open New York executive director Annemarie Gray, whose group advocates for affordable housing development, said the mayor’s flip-flop shows his administration believes “elite comfort is more important than sufficient homes for vulnerable elderly people.”
“After a dozen years of work from two administrations … Eric Adams and Randy Mastro have decided to throw that all away,” Gray said in a statement. “The cancellation of affordable senior housing at Haven Green is shameful, and only reflects the corruption, dysfunction, and incompetence of this administration.”
The plan to build affordable housing for seniors in the Little Italy garden was first rolled out under ex-Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration.
The garden is on city government-owned land, and the development plan would have preserved some of the green space while also constructing the rent-restricted units for seniors.
Ever since the de Blasio administration’s action, the development has been bogged down in delays as the well-heeled supporters of the garden have waged an advocacy effort against the plan, both in court and in public.
“This was a seemingly intractable problem,” Mastro told reporters, “a fight that raged for over a decade.”
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