Elizabeth Street Garden

Elizabeth Street Garden is a 1 acre community sculpture garden in the Nolita neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, located on Elizabeth Street between Prince and Spring Streets. The garden is managed by the eponymous Elizabeth Street Garden (ESG), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, and open to the public for general use and community events.

The garden is owned by the city and privately leased to a corporation owned by Alan Reiver called Elizabeth Street, Inc. It is open to the public, depending on the weather and the availability of volunteers. Neighborhood volunteers operate it year-round, and organize a calendar of free public events, ranging from education, wellness, and the arts.

History
The original site of P.S. 106, later renamed P.S. 21, was designed by master school architect C.B.J. Snyder in 1903 with public outdoor space with a terraced flower garden, designed to serve as a neighborhood social and civic center. The school stood at least through the mid-to-late 1970s. In 1981, the Little Italy Restoration Apartments were built on Spring Street, including much of the former school site, with the remaining space maintained as a recreational area. Plans to build a new school never panned out due to community opposition, and the P.S. 21 playground was a vacant 20,000 sq. ft. lot before becoming the Elizabeth Street Garden in 1991.

In 1990, Manhattan Community Board 2 Parks Committee passed a resolution in favor of leasing it to Allan Reiver, the owner of the Elizabeth Street Gallery located in a renovated 1850s New York City firehouse adjacent to the garden property on Elizabeth Street. He leased it on a month-to-month basis, and began developing the garden as a park-like environment in 1991. The initial garden included perennials, native plants, and trees and adding architectural elements like gates, fencing, statuary, tables, and seating from Reiver's gallery collection. In 2005 Reiver installed a sign saying it was open to the public with entry through his gallery next door.

Proposal to replace the garden
In 2012, ownership of the land was transferred, without public review, from the Board of Education to the Housing Authority. In 2013, community members learned that the city was planning to replace the garden with a residential building for low-income senior citizens, and organized talks and protests to save the garden. The community worked with Reiver to revitalize the space and leave the main gates permanently open to the public. They introduced a calendar of public programming and developed a base of support for retaining the green space for community use. This group formed the Friends of Elizabeth Street Garden, Inc., in 2014.

In 2015, New York's Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) applied for a $6 million grant to start building a housing unit on the land. The garden became the subject of a public debate around whether to develop housing or to establish a more community-centered public green space that built on the existing garden. In 2017, the HPD put out a request for proposals to develop the garden, selecting a proposal named Haven Green.

In April 2017, members of FESG and the original community group branched off to form Elizabeth Street Garden (ESG), a community-run non-profit which has managed the garden since then. The space remained open to the public seven days a week, with free public and educational programming and music and art performances. In 2018, The Cultural Landscape Foundation registered the garden as a Landslide site to help protect it from destruction.

Lawsuit and impact
In March 2019, ESG filed a lawsuit to stop the proposed development, represented by Norman Siegel, arguing among other things that the city had to carry out an environmental impact statement addressing the impact to the neighborhood of losing this green space.

In June 2019, the City Council voted unanimously to proceed with the Haven Green development. This was projected to have 123 non-permanent affordable apartments for seniors, programming for its residents, luxury ground-floor retail, 11,200 square feet of office space for one of the developer partners, Habitat NYC, and approximately 6,600 square feet of privately-owned open space. Councilmember Margaret Chin and Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer both supported the redevelopment, however it was opposed by community members, the local community board, and state Senators and Assembly members. Chin disputed the garden's use as a longstanding public space, saying "It was never open to the public until they heard that the site was going to be designated for affordable housing."

In November 2022, the New York Supreme Court ruled that the city had to conduct an environmental impact statement before proceeding with the construction. In June 2023, the Appellate Division, First Department, unanimously reversed and found that the City's environmental assessment was satisfactory.