City landmark panel to decide on fate of – Business News
The Landmarks Preservation Commission is anticipated to quickly decide the fate of a dilapidated Upper West Side church, whose homeowners plan to file — probably this week — an appeal to revoke the crumbling building’s 15-year-old landmark designation.
The tiny congregation of West Park Presbyterian Church at Amsterdam Avenue and West 86th Street needs to demolish the 135-year-old construction to allow them to sell it to a developer for a new condominium tower that can embody trendy space for performing arts use.
An earlier drama involving a once-beloved church that needed a miracle holds a lesson for the present one. My first Manhattan job within the Nineteen Seventies occurred to be at a performing arts middle inside one other decayed, former Presbyterian home of worship — Christ Church at 344 W. thirty sixth St., which, like West Park had misplaced most of its its congregation.
The West Park Presbyterian Church wants up to $40 million in repairs. Steve Cuozzo
That century-old building was saved by philanthropist Samuel Rubin, who spent a fortune to repair it up and switch it into an avant-garde performing arts middle. The drawback for West Park — which is in a lot worse situation than Christ Church was — is that it’s doomed until one other Samuel Rubin comes alongside. And no such benefactor is wherever in sight regardless of years of media consideration to the state of affairs.
The LPC has executed nice work preserving tons of of really worthy Upper West Side buildings. It ought to acknowledge that West Park CAN’T be saved. Upholding its designation will guarantee it would stay a scaffold-shrouded eyesore endlessly.
The church, by means of its West Park Administrative Commission, needs the LPC to revoke its 2010 landmark designation on hardship grounds. It would sell the wreck for $33.5 million to Alchemy, a revered developer whose tasks embody a tower at 125 W. 57th St. to incorporate a new home for Calvary Baptist Church.
But West Park’s effort to sell the damaging construction to Alchemy confronted blowback from a since-evicted, small performing arts group referred to as the Center at West Park that was beforehand was based mostly there. Preservation-mad elected officers, akin to then-Manhattan Borough president and present City Council member Gale Brewer; and actors Mark Ruffalo, Laurence Fishburne, and Matthew Broderick are howling for the LPC to uphold the building’s landmark standing.
Some of these looking for to torpedo the development plan have ulterior — or exterior — motives. Four members of the humanities group’s board dwell in next-door buildings that overlook the church at 165 W. 86th St. A new tower would possibly properly block their views.
The church needs the Landmark Preservation Commission to revoke its landmark designation on hardship grounds. Steve Cuozzo
The ground for the present battle was set in 2018, when the church signed a five-year lease with the humanities middle. The church, needing a lot more income than it might get from a short-term rental to an arts group, tapped Alchemy to consider sale and development choices in 2021.
Later that 12 months, the church discovered that emergency repairs have been needed to the south wall of the sanctuary. But there was no money for the work.
In 2022, the determined church requested the LPC to revoke the landmark designation and later that 12 months, moved to boot the humanities group when its lease was up.
However, the CWP claimed the lease gave it renewal rights — which the church contested. The church put its appeal to the LPC on maintain whereas litigation proceeded. A state Supreme Court decide allowed the church to void the humanities group’s lease in February 2024 and the choice was unanimously upheld within the Appellate Division.
West Park Administrative Commission head Roger Leaf. Steve Cuozzo
After its courtroom victory, the church re-filed its appeal to the LPC. (The CWP subsequently moved to close by St. Paul and St. Andrew church at 263 W. 86th St.)
Roger Leaf, the top of West Park’s administrative arm, mentioned that on the time of 2010 designation, “It stood empty and in disrepair, surrounded by a sidewalk shed for over a decade and owned by a congregation with almost no financial resources to maintain it.”
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The building has since additional deteriorated. A latest go to discovered treacherously uneven flooring, an unstable roof and quite a few chinks in its weather-beaten sandstone facade.
Although the humanities middle’s government director Debby Hirshman claimed to have raised more than $5 million for urgently needed repairs, Leaf instructed Realty Check the group had by no means documented the declare and that its final financial assertion from 2023 confirmed solely $121,000 in funding.
Neither Hirshman nor anybody else on the CWP responded to our request for remark relating to funds it raised.
