City Sells Off More Gardens

Despite near-freezing rain pouring down hard enough to make the ink on picket signs run, several dozen people—including Met Council’s Susan Howard, above —showed up at a city real-estate auction at One Police Plaza March 19 to protest the sale of several Lower East Side community gardens.

Some protesters made it inside, where despite sticking out in the crowd of landlords and speculators like “Free Mumia” t-shirts at a Pennsylvania prosecutors’ convention, they disrupted the auction for half an hour. One woman even submitted a “winning” bid on one parcel, but was ejected and threatened with arrest for coming up with a handful of change instead of the $65,000 in cash or certified check required as a down payment.

After all the protesters were cleared out, one garden site sold for $270,000 and another for $350,000. The land will presumably be used to build luxury housing.