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You can’t park here!
The dismayed developers of the Elizabeth Street Garden site are crying foul at the city’s move to declare the space as parkland, calling it “an act of naked executive power.”
The suit, filed Wednesday in Manhattan Supreme Court, says that the move violates city charter rules for changes to the City Map, and seeks a restraining order to block the last-ditch effort made during Mayor Eric Adams’ lame duck era to halt the 123-unit senior housing project.
Adams’ parkland maneuver is viewed as a move to stymie Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s pledge to move the decade-long project on city-owned land forward.
The move “fundamentally undermines the integrity of the city’s established land-use approval process,” the suit claims, and could threaten future projects if the laws governing land use can be “disregarded and displaced by political convenience and preference.”
“The Haven Green project went through, and complied with, everything the law requires,” the developers argue of the planned 123 affordable unit building — with 40 percent reserved for formerly homeless seniors.
In June, Adams — who had spent most of his time in office using city resources to fight lawsuits blocking the pending senior housing development — changed his tune, and announced that the garden’s development would be paused, with three other sites of city-owned land serving as alternatives.
But the announcement contained a caveat, noting that the housing switcheroo would only take place if the three sites could pass zoning changes via the lengthy city review process known as ULURP.
Adams’ end-run to suddenly “permanently dedicate this property to public use as parkland” violates that nascent deal, the suit argues.
“The attempted designation was taken without authority, without public notice, without going through the ULURP process, without an administrative record, and without a single legal justification in violation of the administration’s own five-month-old deal to leave the door open to developing the site in the future should additional sites not be fully realized,” the developers said in a statement.
A city hall spokesperson claimed that ULURP would only be triggered if selling land, but the park designation is only a transfer from one agency to another.
When asked for an update on the developers at the three alternative sites, city hall only confirmed that the Haven Green developers were in advanced negotiations over a Suffolk Street site, which could support up to 200 units alone, calling the lawsuit a surprise.
“It is unfortunate that these developers have now brought a frivolous lawsuit to try to leverage a better deal in negotiations with the city,” First Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro said to The Post.
Reps for the developers did not respond with a request to respond to City Hall’s claims.
The group currently operating the garden space called the suit “a misguided attempt to overturn a lawful and long-overdue action by the City of New York to protect one of the last remaining green spaces in our neighborhood,” according to Gothamist.
Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani announced during his campaign that he would reverse Adams’ about-face, and pursue the originally approved Haven Green project.
Despite the celebrity outpouring of support for the Elizabeth Street Garden — which the lawsuit says was off-limits to the public for years until the city announced plans for development in 2013 — Mamdani carried the Nolita district where the garden is by a 16-point margin.
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