Mayor Adams says city will move ahead with eviction of Elizabeth Street garden

Mayor Eric Adams on Tuesday dashed any hope for a last-minute intervention by City Hall to halt the controversial eviction of the Elizabeth Street Garden in Nolita, all but ending a yearslong legal battle by community members to prevent the city-owned greenspace from becoming the site of a new affordable housing complex for seniors.

The garden can be evicted from its lot as soon as Thursday, according to a court order issued by a Manhattan judge last month. During a news conference, Adams said that he understands that many New Yorkers adore the space, but argued it’s more important to address the city’s housing shortage than to preserve the idyllic lawn known for its classical sculptures.

“We need to wrap our heads around the 1.4% vacancy rate,” said Adams. “When I do my senior town halls at the senior adult centers I hear over and over their fear of not being able to afford to live in the city.”

Adams’ push to force out the garden comes as he’s aimed to address the city’s housing shortage by amending zoning laws to allow for more residential development across the five boroughs.

“We have to house New Yorkers,” he said. “The garden is a beautiful place but there's a great beauty to be able to house New Yorkers.”

While the city owns the garden’s lot, the space was first leased to Allen Reiver in 1990, who at first used it to store sculptures. The garden’s operators have paid the city $4,000 per month in rent for decades, court records show. The main gates to the garden were first opened to the public during limited hours every week in 2013, around the same time city officials began to eye the plot as a potential site for new housing.

In a post on X last week, the group that runs the garden wrote that it had pitched alternative sites for the housing development to city officials that wouldn’t require the lot's eviction. But Ilana Maier, a spokesperson for the city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development, said the garden’s operators “refused to tell us what sites they’re actually talking about, which makes it impossible for us to actually respond.”

A spokesperson for the garden painted a different picture, claiming in an email that the group was in active talks with First Deputy Mayor Maria-Torres Springer and other City Hall officials to preserve the space.

HPD officials said the new housing development will also bring a public green space to the Elizabeth Street site.

Barring any change of heart from the mayor’s office, a city marshal could padlock the garden as soon as Thursday.