A pacesetter of effort to dam demolition of West-Park Presbyterian Church lives in next-door constructing (at proper) and would lose her views if a taller constructing replaces church.
Steve Cuozzo
Preservation and landmarking disputes typically make for exhausting selections. Whether or not to raze crumbling West-Park Presbyterian Church at Amsterdam Avenue and West 86th Road won't be the best name at first look. The beautiful, 140-year outdated, Romanesque-Revival construction is a uncommon grace be aware amidst largely drab environment.
However the congregation’s determined monetary plight mixed with the hypocrisy, insincerity and vested pursuits of these against demolition justify just one response: Deliver it on!
The church the place none any longer worship wants an estimated $50 million of labor to stop it from collapsing. It’s been surrounded by scaffolding for 20 years. The Division of Buildings lately ordered it closed for 3 months. It has greater than 60 open and lively DOB violations.
The tiny surviving congregation — which switched to Zoom through the pandemic — doesn’t have something like what it might price to repair West-Park. (Presbyterian church buildings are individually owned by congregations, in contrast to Catholic ones owned by a wealthy archdiocese.)
But amidst a lot noisy debate, and regardless of its perilous state, the church was designated an official metropolis landmark 10 years in the past, when it was already a wreck. The congregation is in search of a “hardship” blessing from the Landmarks Preservation Fee to demolish the constructing so it will probably promote the property to a real-estate developer for $33 million. (Such hardship rulings are uncommon however not extraordinary.) A brand new constructing on the web site would come with a big new facility for the struggling church congregation.
The one method for the congregation to outlive, the church’s administrative chairman, Roger Leaf, instructed Higher West Aspect paper The Spirit, “is to free themselves from the yoke of this constructing.”
The sandstone construction has deteriorated to the purpose that final yr, the south wall was “peeling away from the constructing and tilting in direction of 86th Road,” Leaf mentioned.
However naturally, the standard preservation-at-any-cost suspects are howling to disclaim the church’s request. They embody the identical individuals who pledged to assist elevate funds to rescue the constructing a decade in the past.
Main the cost is Councilwoman Gale Brewer, who will communicate towards demolition at a Neighborhood Board 7 Zoom assembly Might 5. Brewer tenaciously fought for landmark standing 10 years in the past.
She pledged on the time she’d “work to lift the mandatory funds to revive the constructing.” However her workplace has raised solely a meager $35,000.
Additionally on the ramparts is the Heart at West Park, a worthy arts-and-culture nonprofit that's based mostly contained in the church and pays absurdly low hire — round $1.65 per sq. foot — to the congregation below a lease that’s about to run out.
The group claimed to have spent $445,000 prior to now 5 years for “important repairs” of the constructing — not an insignificant sum however far wanting the $18 million that’s wanted for façade restoration alone.
And as is widespread in New York preservation battles, some who take a dim view of any proposed new constructing stand to lose their very own views if the mission goes ahead.
Among the many Heart’s most vocal advocates for preserving the church is much-on-TV board member Susan E. Sullivan, who has termed the state of affairs a “David vs. Goliath” battle. Goliath can be real-estate developer Alchemy Properties, which might purchase the location so it may construct a 19-story condo constructing that would come with 10,000 sq. ft of house for the church.
However public information present that Sullivan owns a house on the twelfth flooring of 161 W. 86th Road, a luxurious pre-war co-op constructing subsequent door to the church. Actual-estate websites present that residences in the identical line as Sullivan’s have a number of rooms that face west — i.e., the place the brand new, taller tower would rise.
Ahem — won't the lack of open, west-facing views diminish the worth, and the appeal, of Sullivan’s pad in a constructing the place a unit two flooring beneath hers bought for greater than $4 million in 2016? Sullivan commented by e-mail, “the one weight [church demolition] carries for me is the potential lack of an historic constructing and shuttering a vibrant performing arts heart.”
What’s extra irksome about Higher West Aspect preservationist zealotry is that the huge district is already one of many metropolis’s most closely landmarked areas: Some 70% of web sites are both immortalized as particular person landmarks or a part of “historic districts” the place demolition and new development are almost as unattainable as for particular buildings.
Those that’d protect all the things wish to name themselves “progressive.” However they’re the opponents of actual progress, resembling changing an unusable outdated church with fashionable residences and a home of worship the place congregants can truly worship.
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