Mamdani to Abandon Plan to Replace Elizabeth Street Garden With Housing

Mayor Zohran Mamdani is expected to walk away from a plan to build affordable housing on the site of a community garden in Lower Manhattan, according to two people familiar with the decision, handing a victory to some celebrities and other neighbors who had vigorously opposed the development.

The move is the latest twist in the protracted conflict over the site, known as the Elizabeth Street Garden, which over more than a decade has become a symbol of the tension between development and preservation and of the difficulties inherent to building housing in wealthy New York City neighborhoods.

Mr. Mamdani’s predecessor, Eric Adams, had been a stalwart supporter of the development on the one-acre site in NoLIta, which would have included 123 affordable homes for older people, along with green space. About 50 of those apartments were slated for homeless New Yorkers.

But the developers’ plans ran up against a groundswell of pro-garden sentiment from celebrities such as Patti Smith, Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro, who called the space, with its stone sculptures and shade trees, a unique public oasis. Last summer, Mr. Adams abruptly said he would abandon the plan and build housing elsewhere.

Last fall, shortly after Mr. Mamdani’s election, Mr. Adams’s first deputy mayor, Randy Mastro, had the property designated as “parkland,” a move that blocked the city’s development plans and could be reversed only by the State Legislature.

The developers on the project — Pennrose, Habitat for Humanity and RiseBoro — sued the city, calling Mr. Mastro’s move unlawful and saying they wanted to “prevent an outgoing administration from destroying an urgently needed affordable-housing project through an act of block executive power.”

Mr. Mamdani’s administration has been in talks with the developers for months, and is expected to settle the lawsuit in the coming days, Gothamist first reported on Tuesday. As part of the settlement, the city would agree to no longer pursue the development, according to the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe confidential settlement discussions.

As a candidate, and as mayor, Mr. Mamdani has adopted a pro-density stance, arguing that only by building vast amounts of affordable apartments can New York City ease its chronic housing shortage. During his campaign, he told the news site Hell Gate that he would evict the Elizabeth Street Garden, the nonprofit tenant that occupies the site, during his first year in office. Days later, Mr. Mastro had the land designated as parkland.

It is not clear if Mr. Mamdani tried to get the state to reverse Mr. Mastro’s move.

Matthew Rauschenbach, a spokesman for the mayor, said the city was “continuing to work toward a resolution of the lawsuit initiated under the previous administration concerning the Elizabeth Street Garden site.” He added that the city was moving forward with another project to build 180 affordable homes nearby.

That site, at 22 Suffolk Street, had been presented by the Adams administration as an alternative to the Elizabeth Street Garden development.

The would-be developers of the garden site did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Housing advocates lamented the impending settlement. “More than a decade has been lost,” said Annemarie Gray, executive director of Open New York, a nonprofit group that supports more development. “Seniors who should have been living in these homes years ago have died waiting. That is the deep injustice at the center of this story, and no settlement erases it.”

But Joseph Reiver, executive director of the Elizabeth Street Garden nonprofit, hailed the likely outcome as “the kind of resolution all New Yorkers deserve.”

And Christopher Marte, the city councilman who represents the district that contains the garden and who has fought against the development, thanked the Mamdani administration for working toward an agreement that prevented housing from being built on the site.

The councilman said in an interview that he supported other housing developments in his district, including at the Suffolk Street site.

“It’s an area that really needs true affordable housing,” Mr. Marte said.

Mr. Mastro, a frequent critic of Mr. Mamdani, was similarly happy with the outcome.

“If whatever settlement of this lawsuit the Mamdani administration is contemplating recognizes and preserves Elizabeth Street Garden as dedicated parkland, that is the right thing to do, and I applaud it,” Mr. Mastro said.