Stephen Yang for the New York Post
They aren’t letting their garden down.
Organizers behind Nolita’s beloved Elizabeth Street Garden are fighting to keep the space open with just days left until it’s evicted — but the city isn’t budging yet on its plan to plow it over for senior housing.
Garden officials, whose supporters include actor Robert de Niro, are pushing embattled Mayor Eric Adams to consider two alternative locations to build 123 units of affordable senior housing as the clock ticks to Thursday.
“These sites could each provide 123+ units of affordable housing for seniors along with additional housing,” garden officials said of the proposal in a Saturday X post. “This is a true win-win without any loss.”
The garden finally received its eviction notice earlier this month after more than a decade-long battle with the city and developers. A judge ultimately ruled against the garden in May while it was appealing its 2021 eviction case.
City Council Member Christopher Marte told The Post he has been working with garden officials for years to pinpoint alternative sites – such as a Department of Environmental Protection water facility lot and a federal parking lot – but none have been able to sway city officials so far.
“In the past year or so, the [Adams] administration has said, ‘we’ll just build on both public lots,’ even though there’s no longtime commitment to build on either of those lots,” Marte said.
The latest plan to save the garden consists of two private lots that the “city can’t build on themselves,” Marte said, with two existing buildings and significantly more housing and retail space than currently proposed.
The owners of both the buildings are already “on board” with the proposal, the garden’s executive director Joseph Reiver told The Post – as the garden braces for its eviction this week.
“While they [the Adams administration] remain open to discussing the sites, they’ve also continued with the eviction,” Reiver said. “It’s a bit of a mixed message they’re sending us.”
But “we’re not packing up,” he added.
Garden advocates were in “waiting mode” Tuesday as the city weighs the alternative plan – but it won’t be the answer they’re looking for unless Mayor Eric Adams has a sudden change of heart.
During a Sept. 3 news conference, Adams noted affordable housing will be built anywhere the city can secure it.
“When we talk about housing, 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,” the mayor said. “I have the city agencies doing analysis of every piece of real estate we have that we can build on top of.”
Celebrities like de Niro, Patti Smith and Martin Scorsese have rallied behind the garden in the months leading up to this week’s eviction, as well as neighboring school children and seniors who would qualify for the planned affordable housing. The 33-year-old garden itself boasts over 200,000 annual visitors, plus hundreds of free public programs and over 20,000 square feet of coveted Manhattan green space.
Reiver said the garden has been “going back and forth [with the Adams administration] for over a month, and that officials were open to having a conversation about alternative sites for the affordable housing development.”
He added that the city’s messaging has been “misleading” over its portrayal of how much seniors want the development – pointing to the more than 123 seniors who penned a letter in support of the garden this summer – and the open space that the Haven Green plan would create in lieu of the Elizabeth Street Garden.
“They’ve been saying the Haven Green development provides 16,000 square feet of [publicly accessible] open space, which is not true,” he said. “They’re using the private courtyard next door to inflate those numbers … They’re destroying the entire garden and building on about 70% of the lot and incorporating use of the private courtyard next door.”
The executive director added that the garden intends to explore “every” legal option possible should the proposal fall through.
In the meantime, Marte said he hopes the city considers the over 990,000 petition signatures sent to the Adams administration, as well as the thousands of letters in protest from locals and neighboring schoolchildren.
“I don’t see how this administration can reject this offer in good faith,” Marte said. “This is our cultural center in Little Italy and we don’t have the green space that others take for granted.
“This community garden means the world to the constituents and to the city,” he added. “we will be losing a lot if the city moves through with this.”