Mamdani administration expected to drop plans to replace popular New York sculpture garden with affordable housing

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration is expected to abandon plans to demolish Manhattan’s Elizabeth Street Garden in Soho for an affordable-housing project, according to reports by Gothamist and The New York Times. The one-acre, city-owned garden—operated by a nonprofit led by Joseph Reiver—has been a public sculpture-and-plant space since the early 1990s and has drawn support from figures including Patti Smith, Martin Scorsese, and Robert De Niro. The site had been slated for Haven Green, a proposed senior affordable-housing development with 123 units plus ground-floor retail and offices, involving partners Habitat for Humanity, Pennrose, and RiseBoro. The dispute dates to 2012, when the city transferred the lot to the New York City Housing Authority, and continued after founder Allan Reiver’s death in 2021.

Read the full article at The Art Newspaper - International art news and events