![](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/434df95b2c465f941a781643a7302f9cbe-GettyImages-2221021135.rhorizontal.w700.jpg\")
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\n The Elizabeth Street Garden.
\n Photo: Barry Williams\/New York Daily News\/Tribune News Service\/Getty Images\n <\/p>\n
Just before the New Year, as Eric Adams was facing down the end of his days in City Hall, his administration found time for \u201cone final harebrained scheme,\u201d per The Real Deal.<\/a> The plot: to permanently protect Elizabeth Street Garden from future development by turning it into a public park and offering the developers trying to build housing there something they couldn\u2019t refuse. Only the offer might not have been legal \u2014 and it didn\u2019t even catch on. Classic Adams!<\/p>\n It\u2019s another twist in a saga so twisty that it\u2019s now strange to remember Adams had initially backed the idea of turning the city lot turned sculpture garden into apartments for seniors. But he flip-flopped in June<\/a>, after bringing on Randy Mastro as his deputy mayor, and designated the garden as city parkland in November \u2014 a move that seemed designed to stop Zohran Mamdani from reviving the housing project on the site and secure Adams\u2019s legacy as the savior of the celebrity-approved<\/a> green space. But the developers who had been in line to build housing there sued<\/a>, arguing the mayor can\u2019t act \u201cunilaterally\u201d and skip over the city\u2019s regular planning processes. The suit created a delay that threw the fate of the garden to the next mayor, who had already gone on the record promising to revive the housing plan<\/a> for the site. The city said the development group (Pennrose Properties, Habitat for Humanity, and RiseBoro) was pausing its suit amid negotiations, but the developers themselves declined<\/a> to comment, and it wasn\u2019t clear they were on board.<\/p>\n Outside of the courts, Mastro was coming up with a new last-ditch scheme. On December 29, two days before his boss would have to step down as mayor, he wrote a letter to the developers, asking them to drop the lawsuit if they wanted to be selected to develop housing on another city-owned site at 22 Suffolk Street. But offering it to them seemed to override the city\u2019s land-review process yet again. \u201cA City Hall spokesperson could not immediately provide an explanation as to why the development of the Suffolk site was not decided by a public bidding process,\u201d The Real Deal<\/a> reported on Dec. 29. The Real Deal columnist Erik Engquist put it<\/a> more bluntly yesterday: \u201cNever have I seen the city announce a deal before it was reached.\u201d Besides, the Adams administration\u2019s offer of another site was far from a guarantee \u2014 the same multiyear approval process would have to be repeated all over again to get a project at Suffolk Street moving \u2014 hardly appealing, given the length of the fight they were still mired in at Elizabeth Street Garden.<\/p>\n Sign Up for the Curbed Newsletter<\/p>\n A daily mix of stories about cities, city life, and our always evolving neighborhoods and skylines.<\/p>\n Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice<\/p>\n