Esperanza was one of the most active community gardens developed in this period. It was planted in 1977 by Alicia Torres, her family, and the neighbors who lived next door to the empty lot at 221 East 7th Street. It took them an entire year to clear the trash and prepare the ground, but the result was well worth the effort. The birth of the gardens helped to transform the Lower East Side from a burnt-out ghetto into a vibrant, attractive community. This new beauty became a double-edged sword, though, because by the early 1980s the neighborhood began to attract real estate developers.
Housing is a pressing concern in New York City.
However, what is being built is primarily luxury rate housing, with rents out of reach of the people who actually live in the Lower East Side. And the city targeted lots where the gardens were growing for development, even though there are plenty of vacant lots available in the same neighborhoods, often on the same streets. Esperanza was one of these gradens. Esperanza was first threatened in August of 1999, when the city offered to sell the garden to Donald Cappocia, a real estate developer who had donated more money than legally allowed to Mayor Guiliani's election campaign and whose company had already built luxury housing on top of the ruins of three other local community gardens. The gardeners at Esperanza immediately began a campaign to save their twenty-two year old piece of urban paradise.