ESG Gets Official City Park Status, But…

By Brian J. Pape, AIA, LEED-AP

It’s official, sort of. Since 1822, the little spot of heaven called Elizabeth Street Garden (ESG), has officially been a dedicated recreation space for the NOLITA neighborhood. After more than 50 years in the city’s neglected inventory, the ESG has finally gotten the recognition it has deserved. It was never meant to be a development site, and should never have been targeted for development by underhanded council members.

Fortunately, it is not too little, too late.

NYC Mayor Eric Adams’ action was revealed in a November 3 letter from Department of Citywide Administrative Services Commissioner Louis Molina, as first reported in the Gothamist blog by David Brand, Elizabeth Kim and Liam Quigley on November 12. “By this notice, the City unequivocally and permanently dedicates this property to public use as parkland,” Molina wrote. “….We are committed to ensuring Elizabeth Street Garden remains a beloved community park and cannot be alienated in the future.”

On November 19 the developers selected to build at ESG sued Adams and Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro. They charged both with violating the city’s Uniform Land Use Review Procedure when naming ESG as a city park and filed to immediately impose a temporary restraining order preventing the park designation from being official.

“It is unfortunate that these developers have now brought a frivolous lawsuit to try to leverage a better deal in negotiations with the city,” Mastro said. “The city has followed all proper procedures to designate this site as parkland, and this is a meritless lawsuit that does not have New Yorkers’ best interest in mind.” He said the city will ensure the garden will become an open public park.

This follows last summer’s announcement by Adams and then NYC Department of Parks and Recreation Commissioner Sue Donoghue about a new $30 million effort to transform vacant, abandoned lots into green space. This plan would put an additional 37,000 New Yorkers within a 10-minute walk to a park.

As the October 2021 WestView News article The Double-Cross Continues at Elizabeth Street Garden by this reporter recounts, the garden was deed-restricted to be recreation space in perpetuity when given over to the city. It was left fenced in and abandoned for decades due to lack of political will and funds.

From 1822 to 1970, neighbors in the NOHO (North of Houston) and SLID (Special Little Italy District), had a neighborhood recreation space. The ESG site was part of the Free School Society’s P.S. 5, built in 1822 with outdoor play areas, located between Spring and Prince streets, which was then donated to the city in 1853 for educational use, according to the deed restrictions. The city demolished the school in 1971 and in 1981 sold the southern part of the site to LIRA, a non-profit Section 8 affordable housing organization, for a 151-unit building at 21 Spring Street, reserving the northern part (the ESG site) “exclusively for recreational use.”

Instead of abiding by the deed restrictions or making it available as recreation space, the city allowed the site to deteriorate as a dangerous fenced-in garbage dump. The city even tried to pass off the site to the 21 Spring Street tenants, but they could not afford to maintain it.

Then in 1990, Elizabeth Street Gallery, a store selling antiques and architectural decorations, began renting the weedy, fenced lot from the city by promising to clean up the garbage. They did that and so much more. Since 2013, the lot has been open for neighbors including the seniors at 21 Spring Street. The garden is a godsend, as they have repeatedly testified at public hearings.

Yet in 2012, a councilperson for the Essex Crossing Redevelopment area made a backroom deal ear-marking the ESG site for affordable housing, despite the fact that 151 affordable units had already been built on the school site. The shady deal was made without informing the neighbors or Community Board 2 (CB2) until a year after the deal was made.

Once this double-cross was discovered, a concerted effort began to return ESG to the deed provision of “exclusively for recreational use.” CB2 joined in recapping the disingenuous way the city has mistreated this district at its public board meeting on January 24, 2019. The community board studied the various issues for years, reported their findings at the open meetings, and strongly advocated for much-needed park space, as well as more consideration of for affordable housing close to community and recreational centers, public libraries and parks. Their findings seemed to go unheeded for years.

ESG was saved for all our children, first by the funding and work of a local merchant, Allan Reiver and his son Joseph Reiver, and then finally, this year, by Mayor Adams and City Council Member Christopher Marte’s action to preserve it forever as the park it was meant to be all along.