Adams Pitches Last-Minute Elizabeth Street Garden Deal

In the final days of the Adams administration, officials are dangling an alternative development site in front of the team jettisoned from building housing at the Elizabeth Street Garden.

First Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro gave Pennrose, Riseboro and Habitat for Humanity New York City and Westchester an ultimatum last week: If they want to develop 22 Suffolk Street, they must drop their lawsuit against the city.

The city-owned site is being offered in exchange for the development team abandoning its legal fight over the Elizabeth Street Garden. The city tapped the developers in 2017 to build 123 units of senior housing at the garden site, a project known as Haven Green.

For years, the city fended off litigation over the site’s future, and after a key legal victory in 2024, the Adams administration moved forward with plans to evict the garden. But soon after Mastro joined the administration, City Hall reversed course.

In June, the administration announced that it would leave the garden intact and would instead move forward with housing projects on three other sites: 22 Suffolk Street, 156-166 Bowery Street and 100 Gold Street. Projects on those sites, which need to be rezoned, would net thousands of housing units, including hundreds more affordable units than planned for the garden site.

After Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani made clear that he would evict the garden once in office, the Adams administration designated the city-owned site as parkland. At the time, Mamani said that undoing the action would prove nearly impossible because it would require buy-in from the state legislature.

However, the development team sued the city in November, arguing that the administration couldn’t unilaterally declare the site a city park. Such a land-use change would need to go through the city’s Uniform Land Use Review Procedure, or Ulurp, which is required to map land as a city park, according to the lawsuit.

In a letter sent to the development team on Friday, Mastro said the city will designate the companies as the developers of 200 affordable housing units at 22 Suffolk Street as long as they drop their lawsuit by Dec. 31.

If the team doesn’t abandon its lawsuit, the city will find another development partner, the letter states.

Messages to representatives and attorneys for the developers were not immediately returned. A City Hall spokesperson could not immediately provide an explanation as to why the development of the Suffolk site was not decided by a public bidding process.

“We hope this group of developers accepts our offer, so together, we can deliver on the Adams administration’s promise to provide a win-win solution for the Elizabeth Street Garden – preserving cherished community green space while also building far more affordable housing than the 123 units originally contemplated at the garden site alone,” Mastro said in a statement.

On Monday, the administration also announced that it had reached a licensing agreement with the nonprofit Elizabeth Street Garden to continue operating the park through the next 10 years, with the option of two five-year extensions.

The nonprofit has also agreed to pay $100,000 it owes in back rent for the site, in 10 annual installments over the next decade (the first $10,000 payment is due this week).

It’s not clear how the development team will proceed. In November, the developers agreed to pause their lawsuit as they negotiated with the city over the Suffolk site. In a Dec. 19 letter, the administration authorized the development team to seek financing for the Suffolk site, but Mastro said the lawsuit “materially undermines the City’s ability to maintain the confirmations of support and approvals necessary to advance the Suffolk Street project.”

He was referring to an agreement reached with Council member Chris Marte to ensure his support of rezoning the Suffolk Street site, as well as the other planned rezonings, in exchange for leaving Elizabeth Street Garden alone.

Marte was the sole Manhattan Council member to vote against the City of Yes for Housing Opportunity and previously spoke out against the rezoning planned for 100 Gold Street. Mastro said the three substitute projects would be dead on arrival without Marte’s support, though the passage of ballot measures that weaken the City Council’s tradition of member deference may have changed the power dynamics for these rezonings.

The Adams administration’s reversal on the Elizabeth Street Garden project raised questions about the risk of partnering with the city on projects. It also traded a project that was closer to shovel-ready for three that need to go through the city’s land-use review process and will be the responsibility of the next administration to push forward.

The project’s trajectory also complicates Adams’ housing legacy, which included several initiatives aimed at building more housing throughout the city. The decision to drop Haven Green drew sharp criticism from housing groups, elected officials and developers who saw it as a hypocritical acquiescence to wealthy and celebrity interests.

Proponents of the garden saw the deal with Marte as a vindication of their long-standing argument that the city could find other, better sites for housing while leaving the park alone.