Elizabeth Street Garden (ESG) is an iconic green open space, offering a multitude of community- based events, including educational programs for children and adults alike. The garden is situated in the Little Italy section of lower Manhattan, that sorely lacks open space, let alone green open space. It is a beautifully landscaped, publicly accessible green open space with a large lawn of lush grass, seasonal flowers, bushes and numerous trees.
Many statutes and sculptures of significant historical value figure prominently in the garden, contributing to its unique character in making it a cultural destination and a “work of art”. Local organizations, including the YMCA, branches of the New York Public Library, and Lower Eastside Ecological Center, as well as public schools, host events, workshops, concerts and outdoor movies, in addition to educational events for more than 750 public-school students, including workshops organized with two public schools.
The city and the Department of Housing and Preservation (HPD) approved a proposed development project to construct 123 units of affordable senior housing where ESG currently exists. If the proposal progresses, Elizabeth Street Garden will cease to exist.
This issue of public concern is not about whether affordable senior housing should be built. No one seriously disputes that the city is in the midst of an affordable housing crisis or that seniors are particularly vulnerable to rising rents. But if the city wishes to address that problem — and by all means it should — it must do so in accordance with the state and city environmental and zoning laws.
Simply put, preserving ESG, and developing affordable housing is not a zero-sum game. As Judge Jenny Rivera said in her persuasive 24-page dissent to the New York Court of Appeals recent decision regarding this matter “affordable housing and climate change efforts are not mutually exclusive goals.”
Arguing ESG should be open more and not be controlled by a non-public entity and that access is a crucial consideration in deciding whether ESG should continue to exist the city has the option to amend the lease for the property, mandating public accessibility for extended hours. This is a plan in which ESG is in accord.
Arguing that there “are plenty of green spaces in this downtown area” is just not true. The other open spaces, including green spaces in the study area will not compensate for the loss of ESG. Some of the spaces are walkways between lanes of traffic, some include paved ball courts and playgrounds, not green spaces. A number of spaces are too small to be community gathering spaces. They are simply not comparable. Moreover, the open space remaining after the development is constructed will not lend itself to the public events that are now available to visitors to ESG.
Regarding alternative sites, had the city conducted an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) that we believe is required in these circumstances it would have been required to identify and rule out alternative sites for the proposed development. If the city wants to destroy open green space, then in an EIS, it will have to explain why no alternative could provide affordable senior housing without destroying a treasured sui generis environmentally beneficial community resource like ESG. That did not occur here.
Finally, and most telling, is the effect the destruction of Elizabeth Street Garden would have on climate change concerns. Nowhere in the court’s decision (except for Rivera’s dissent) is critical climate change mentioned and the concern about rising urban heat that New York is now experiencing. Nor is it mentioned that open green space can cool an area, or the soon to be destruction of trees which mitigate heat, absorb and store carbon facilitating greenhouse gas reduction and reduces sewer overflows and stormwater runoffs.
It is not too late for the city to reconsider advancing this proposed development.
As local resident and business owner Poppy King so eloquently described ESG “it has everything the city should be protecting not destroying….It is a place for all generations, regardless of race, gender, or socio economics, to spend quality time and regenerate so that all of us can be better citizens and better humans…. Why tear down a space that is already operating as a heart and soul for a neighborhood…. It… has a jewel in its midst that will forever serve the community in a way that nothing could replace or attract as the Elizabeth Street Garden does.”
Elizabeth Street Garden is worth saving.
Siegel and Hyman are part of the legal team trying to save the Elizabeth Street Garden.
