The Phony Environmental Study

By Alec Pruchnicki, MD

AN EMPTY LOT AT 271 BOWERY STREET, above, is little more than a crowded alley way, not a viable alternative for affordable housing. Photo by Alec Pruchnicki.

The Haven Green housing proposed for part of the Elizabeth Street Garden (ESG) site has been delayed again by a court order requiring an environmental impact study to determine if the loss of some of the garden’s green space will have a significant impact on the quality of life of the surrounding neighborhood (The Last Shot at Saving the Elizabeth Street Garden, Village View, May 2024). The distance to Washington Square Park is cited as a proof of lack of open space but this straw man argument neglects other options. The garden’s supporters have refused to acknowledge that the area surrounding the ESG has a great deal of open space.

According to the current proposals, the ESG would lose 14,000 of its 20,000 square feet of open space but it would gain access to LIRA housing open space adjacent to the garden. (Housing and the Garden: Get Them Both, Westview News, May 2013). The net loss would be 4,000 square feet of garden space according to Haven Green supporters. Would this loss do irreparable harm to the environment of the neighborhood? Here is a list of nearby parks. These alternative sites are all around the neighborhood surrounding the ESG.

A loss of 4,000 square feet out of 400,000 is about one percent. Would this be irreparable damage? Even if the Haven Green data is wrong and the garden loss was 14,000 square feet, that would only be about a three percent decrease in open space. Although almost all the nearby parks are paved, there is green space in the Liz Christy Garden, Kalunga Garden (within Sara Roosevelt Park), and a small greenway in the First Park. There is plenty of open space, of one type or another and a one to three percent loss would not destroy the environment of the neighborhood. Despite this abundance of open space, ESG supporters still insist that there is no alternative to a garden exactly like the one that presently exists.

In several articles (An Inexplicable Ruling Against Elizabeth Street Garden, Westview News July/August 2023, and an article in May’s Village View) and in ESG publicity at its site, there is a desperate attempt to show that there are viable alternatives to housing on Elizabeth Street. Borough President Mark Levine did a survey looking at sites for affordable housing throughout Manhattan and found only two in Community Board 2, where the ESG is located. One was at 388 Hudson Street, but additional housing is already being planned for that space. Additional, not instead of. The other site is a federally owned garage on Howard Street that has been proposed by ESG advocates as an alternative site for years. 271 Bowery has also been offered as an alternative site, but it is little more than a crowded alley way. Around CB2 and in other nearby areas there might be sites, but they are being considered for additional, not alternative, housing locations.

I have a medical practice in an assisted living facility on Fifth Avenue at 108th Street about five miles from the ESG. We sometimes get people coming to us from Little Italy, Greenwich Village and SoHo. The most common reason they left the neighborhoods they lived in for decades is that they needed safe affordable housing and there just isn’t much of that in those neighborhoods.

I love parks and open spaces and the I appreciate the values of greenery. But I love housing more. To think that 120 or more low-income, some of them homeless, individuals must suffer for year after year so that a beautiful little luxury like the ESG can exist untouched, and unmodified in every way, is heartless and cruel.

Is this environmental study The Last Shot at Saving the Elizabeth Street Garden? Let’s hope so. Build housing on Elizabeth Street already.