The Adams administration has designated Elizabeth Street Garden as city parkland, making a bureaucratic maneuver that will likely complicate incoming Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s pledge to build an affordable housing development for seniors on the site in Nolita.
The move, revealed in a Nov. 3 letter from Department of Citywide Administrative Services Commissioner Louis Molina, is the latest twist in the yearslong saga over the green space. Mayor Eric Adams, after initially supporting the plan to build 123 apartments at the site, dropped the effort over the summer. Mamdani had vowed to evict the garden in the first year of his administration.
Any development on parkland requires approval by the state legislature through a process known as alienation.
“By this notice, the City unequivocally and permanently dedicates this property to public use as parkland,” Molina wrote in the letter.
The city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development worked for years to bring 123 affordable apartments for seniors to the site. Supporters of the garden, including celebrities Robert De Niro, Martin Scorsese and Patti Smith, pushed back, arguing it served as a unique downtown oasis.
A spokesperson for the housing department referred a request for comment to City Hall
Adams officially reversed his administration’s support for the proposal in June, a day before the Democratic mayoral primary. First Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro announced a deal with local Councilmember Christopher Marte to identify other sites in the neighborhood for new affordable housing.
Until the letter transferring ownership to the parks department, the garden’s days appeared numbered. The space’s backers had lost multiple legal appeals and been ordered to pay around $100,000 in rent owed to the city.
Mastro declined to comment Wednesday. A City Hall spokesperson did not immediately respond to an inquiry.
Habitat for Humanity’s Matthew Dunbar, who is among the nonprofit housing developers on the stalled project, said his organization had not received any notice about the latest move.
“This is news to us,” he said.
A Mamdani spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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