City Demolishes Harlem Garden;
500 Green Spots Still in Danger

More than 500 community gardens throughout the city remain in danger of being demolished by the city. despite the May deal that saved over 100 green spots by selling them to a land trust.

On June 28, bulldozers demolished part of the Project Harmony garden on West 122nd Street. The bulldozing was timed to precede a court action by the Puerto Rican Legal Defense Fund and was stopped by a judicial restraining order with about half the garden destroyed, according to the urban-gardening newsletter Urban Outdoors.

Haja and Cynthia Worley, the couple who ran the garden, had hoped to work out a deal with the city to exchange the Harlem site, across from a day-care center, for a truly vacant lot elsewhere in the neighborhood, according to Urban Outdoors . “We have plenty of land to build on,” Cynthia Worley told the newsletter.

Meanwhile, the City Council land-use committee voted to hand over two Lower East Side gardens to developer Donald Capoccia for luxury housing: the “Jardin de La Esperanza” (Garden of Hope) on East 7th Street between avenues B and C, and the “El Bello Amanecer Borinqueno (The Beautiful Puerto Rican Dawn)” garden on Avenue C around the corner.

Capoccia has been trying to accumulate land in the area for luxury apartments since last fall. Community Board 3 approved his project on the condition that the Esperanza garden be preserved. But the Council land-use committee approved a new proposal to build luxury housing on the site, reversing previous commitments without community input.

“We were betrayed!” Jose Torres of East 7th Street told the More Gardens! coalition. “How can they do this, after all those commitments to preserve the garden? They didn’t even allow us to speak!”

“With about 500 community gardens still threatened, it is now up to activists to convince NYC governmental leaders that alternatives exist to taking gardens in order to provide housing,” Urban Outdoors wrote.