After years of a protracted legal fight, it seems that the Elizabeth Street Garden in Little Italy has run its course and will soon make way for new housing construction. The fight isn’t over, with garden Executive Director Joseph Reiver vowing a challenge beyond the state’s highest court that this week sided with NYC in its effort to utilize the lot, but this seems like an unnecessary and losing battle.
Soon enough, we hope, the lot will feature 123 units of housing set aside for low-income seniors, whose need is great and whose options are few. The city is not taking anyone’s property; it has long owned the land, and is simply moving to terminate the month-to-month lease that the garden has depended on for the last three decades.
We can’t pretend like the loss of the garden won’t be felt. Reiver, whose late father Allan rented the space and founded the garden in 1990, and his volunteers have put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into its upkeep and cultivation as a community space. Prior to Allan’s intervention, the area was an ugly and overgrown lot. That is a real legacy, and one that should be celebrated.
But there’s a reason that we don’t call it the Elizabeth Street park; despite its defenders’ frequent references to it as a neighborhood meeting spot where all can enjoy the sculptures and greenery, it is not and has never been a public park. Reiver and his group still technically control access, and up until a few years ago, this access seemed governed by Allan’s personal sign-off.
At this stage, the issue of affordable housing construction is an existential one for the city, and it’s all hands on deck. The garden has had its decades of time in the sun, and now it’s time for transformation.
The notion that there’s some massive dearth of greenery in the neighborhood, with the Elizabeth Street Garden as a lonely buttress to the encroaching concrete hordes is bunk; it’s not the most park-heavy district in the city, but there are plenty of green spaces in this Downtown area, ones that are not under private control. Ditto the argument that there’s plenty of additional space to build housing. If there’s one thing that’s relatively scarce in this city, it’s space, which goes double for space already zoned and ready for housing construction.
Opponents put forth a few alternate sites for the housing, which is fine and well, but not how this works. You don’t get to head off as-of-right construction just because there are other places that the construction could conceivably be done. Build on those sites too. Build everywhere, and build more actual public parks. We’re sure that the community members who gathered at the garden will find other spots to meet.
The art that sits in the lot will be moved, perhaps where it might be more widely appreciated. And among those who might visit the remaining green spaces and appreciate the cultural exchange might be the very low-income seniors housed in the lot’s new housing, who will be able to live in new units in an area of downtown Manhattan where even those making six figures are hard-pressed to afford a decent space. This will be the lot’s next legacy.
