RESOLVING THE LEDGER
This is one outlet's own report from Gothamist — the article as it was filed. Other outlets are covering the same event; open the full story to compare every source side by side.
See the full story · 3 sources
A non-profit newsroom, powered by WNYC. Gothamist Listen Live Donate News After bitter Elizabeth Street Garden saga, is an ‘amicable resolution’ in sight? By David Brand Published Aug 11, 2026
Twitter Reddit Email Never miss a story Email address By submitting your information, you're agreeing to receive communications from New York Public Radio in accordance with our Terms . By David Brand Published Aug 11, 2026
Twitter Reddit Email We rely on your support to make local news available to all Make your contribution now and help Gothamist thrive in 2026. Donate today
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
A bitter, decade-long dispute over the future of a city-owned lot turned popular-community greenspace may finally, officially be coming to an end – roughly 14 months after then-Mayor Eric Adams abruptly canceled a plan to build low-income senior housing there in June 2025.
The saga over the fate of the Elizabeth Street Garden has played out in community protests, pro-housing demonstrations and a series of lawsuits dating back to at least 2017, when the city selected a trio of developers – the company Pennrose and nonprofits Habitat for Humanity and Riseboro – to build 123 units of affordable housing for low income seniors on the lot.
City officials defended the development plan for years before Adams’ sudden reversal. The three developers sued the city in November, adding yet another skirmish in the long, drawn-out war over the garden.
Now, according to court filings , the city and the spurned development team may be on the verge of an “amicable resolution” to settle the dispute. City lawyers and attorneys for the developers are due back in court on Thursday after requesting an extension to negotiate a settlement.
City attorney Derek Segars asked the judge last month to give the sides another four weeks to reach a deal, “with the expectation that the matter will be amicably resolved before the proposed return date” of Aug. 13.
The two sides have declined to say what a settlement might entail. But three people familiar with the discussions who asked not to be named so as not to derail negotiations, say the city and developers are working on a deal that would allow the developers to formally take over a city-owned lot at 22 Suffolk Street. The narrow, nearly block-long parcel at the corner of Grand Street once considered a potential site for a new school.
The lot has been presented as a peace offering before.
In the final days of the Adams administration, top deputy Randy Mastro had issued a letter to the developers offering to give them the rights to the lot in exchange for dropping their lawsuit. The development team rejected the bid before current Mayor Zohran Mamdani took office days later.
Mamdani said during his campaign that he supported building housing on the Elizabeth Street site, but so far he has not challenged his predecessors’ move to designate the lot as parkland.
“As part of our commitment to building the affordable housing New Yorkers urgently need, we are moving forward to deliver over 180 affordable homes at 22 Suffolk Street,” said City Hall spokesperson Matthew Rauschenbach. “At the same time, we are continuing to work toward a resolution of the lawsuit initiated under the previous administration concerning the Elizabeth Street Garden site.”
In a written statement, Pennrose Acquisitions President Dylan Salmons said the company “is committed to delivering affordable housing to New Yorkers who need it most, and we continue to look for opportunities to partner with the City to deliver on this mission.”
A spokesperson for Habitat for Humanity and RiseBoro declined to comment.
Pennrose and the other members of the development team filed a scathing complaint in state Supreme Court in November 2025, charging Adams and Mastro of using “executive fiat” to reverse a decision to build the new housing after a robust public review process.
Killing the project, known as Haven Green, would “establish dangerous precedents” that could allow future mayors to overturn plans that had gone through the city’s lengthy land-use procedure and been approved by the City Council, they wrote.
But supporters of the Elizabeth Street Garden, including the group that has maintained it for years, celebrated Adams’ decision. The garden began after the owner of an outdoor sculpture business next to the lot used it to store and display pieces under a lease with the city and later opened it to the public. The city’s housing agency planned to evict the nonprofit running the space before Mastro intervened last year.
The group, Elizabeth Street Garden Inc., intervened in the lawsuit on behalf of the city earlier this year. Its attorney Norman Siegel told Gothamist he has not received any “specific information on a settlement” ahead of this week’s scheduled appearance.
Adams and Mastro asserted that stopping the plan allowed them to win concessions from local Councilmember Christopher Marte to back new housing projects at three other locations, including 22 Suffolk St., 156-166 Bowery and 100 Gold St. They said the three locations would one day result in even more affordable units than the 123 planned for the Elizabeth Street site.
The building at 100 Gold St. is the current headquarters of the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development and was already planned for redevelopment before the announcement last June.
In an interview last June, Mastro said he expected development to begin quickly on at least one of the locations without specifying which lot. “There’s going to be shovels in the ground at the end of the year on that or certainly by early 2026,” he told Gothamist .
Work has yet to begin at any of the locations the Adams administration proposed.
Mastro on Monday blamed the Mamdani administration for the projects not yet starting and he called the developers’ lawsuit “frivolous” because the city had deemed the Elizabeth Street Garden site parkland.
...
AIPROPX is an independent multi-source news index — we track, compare, and connect coverage from across the web into one place you won't find anywhere else.