By Allison Moon
A jazz band played inside West-Park Presbyterian Church on the corner of West 86th Street and Amsterdam Avenue Saturday afternoon as about 200 people filed into the pews of the endangered structure. Among those in the crowd were actor Mark (The Hulk) Ruffalo and comedian Amy Schumer, both brought on board to draw star power to the effort to keep the church’s landmark designation – and block a developer’s plan to replace it with a 19-story condominium.
“Yes, this church needs work, but it is doable,” City Councilmember Gale Brewer told the rally, addressing the deteriorated state of the 133-year-old church. The church’s fate is the subject of a hearing scheduled for Tuesday before the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission.
Brewer led the campaign 12 years ago to gain landmark status for West-Park. Now, the church – which has just 12 members left in its congregation – says it cannot afford the $50 million that church officials say is needed to repair its crumbling exterior and fix the cracked ceilings and chipped paint on the inside. The church’s solution: remove the landmark status (a decision the commission would have to make), enabling demolition of the church and sale of the land to a condo developer.
“No, we won’t let it happen,” Ruffalo chanted, urging the crowd to follow him. Exactly how the church’s future could be secured was not clearly spelled out on Saturday, but there were insinuations that the amount of money needed for repairs was being exaggerated in order to convince the commission to remove landmark status and allow the condo development.
Debby Hirshman, Executive Director of The Center at West Park, a nonprofit community performing arts center that rents space inside the church, acknowledged that scaffolding has masked the church facade since 2001. (I’d always thought of that sidewalk shed as being there “for as long as I remember,” and Hirshman was now confirming that it was there before I was born.) The need for serious repairs is not in question, but Hirshman’s center has proposed buying the building from the church and raising money to preserve it – all for a price significantly lower than that offered by developer Alchemy Properties.
Details of the center’s fundraising efforts to date were not revealed at Saturday’s rally, but Ruffalo touted Hirshman’s past fundraising record. As director of the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan, she raised $95 million “for a building that didn’t even exist,” he said. Thus, “imagine what she could do with this place, with this history,” Ruffalo said. “She has the persistence to make this place as valuable to the Upper West Side as the Public Theater is to downtown.”
Michael Hiller, the attorney representing The Center at West Park, said removing the church’s landmark status would be a repudiation of the city commission’s earlier determination that the building is historically significant.
“Just twelve years ago when that happened the Landmarks Preservation Commission went on record saying that this building is one of the most important buildings on the Upper West Side. And yet that same commission, right now, is considering an application to destroy in favor of luxury housing,” Hiller said. The commission rarely overturns landmark designations; if it does so for West-Park, it would be only the 14th such decision in the commission’s 58-year history.
Speakers at Saturday’s meeting emphasized two themes. Derek McQueen, a Presbyterian minister in Harlem, urged preserving West-Park as “a place that welcomes all” for both spirituality and the performing arts. Ruffalo stressed that removing landmark status would open the way for the church property to be replaced by a “luxury high-rise that encases the rich from the rest of the city and destroys this community’s space.”
“I just think it’s a money grab,” Brewer said. “They have not exhausted alternatives to avoid demolition.”
The landmarks commission has invited the public to make written and oral presentations at Tuesday’s hearing, and it has said it will not vote on the issue until sometime later. The commission held a similar hearing last year; Brewer said next week’s hearing was scheduled because there is now more information about the building’s condition and costs to repair it.
“We hope that they decide not to accept the hardship application,” Brewer told the Rag. “In 2010, I was the one who landmarked this church when I was in the City Council and I’ll be darned if they’re going to tear it down.”
The Upper West Side is covered with scaffolding in large part because the Landmarks Commission imposes onerous, costly, counterproductive requirements for any repairs. That, along with Local Law 11 five year inspection/repair requirements, has blighted our streetscapes by requiring scaffolding everywhere.
If we could get rid of the Landmark districts and individual Landmark designations, the cost to make Local Law 11 required repairs would be cut in half, and the time scaffolding was up would be drastically reduced. Alternative: sensible requirements from Landmarks – for example, eliminate their requirement that terra cotta must be replace with terra cotta (vs. cast stone) ground through 6th floor. There are only 2 sources of appropriate architectural terra cotta in the US, one upstate, one in California. Both have lead times of a year. So – because of this requirement, none of us can see building facades for years – because they are covered with scaffolding. Absurd, costly, ugly. Landmarks is out of control, and has no sense of the real world results of its decisions – or when these are pointed out, does not care.
Local Law 11 is most likely one of the things pushing the cost of repair upwards. I live in a 8-story building and our Local Law 11 “check,” BEFORE any repairs is just over $600,000!!! Why would anyone ever build another brick anything in our city? No wonder all new buildings are glass and steel.
It’s pretty for sure.. I’ve attended a number of musical events there etc. However with so few church attendees what is the point of endlessly keeping it there, covered in scaffolding?
Jules, the hope is to buy the property so that both the beautiful building can finally be restored and all those wonderful arts groups can continue to perform – and that the active congregations that do use the church (not the 12-person Presbyterian community, but other larger worship groups, can keep their spiritual home. And of course once a historic building is gone, it will never be replaced.
There is such an underlying assumption of pessimism running through so many of these comments. They come from the perspective that everything old is good, everything new is ugly, and new buildings always will be ugly. Every old beloved building in New York was new once and almost all of them replaced an even older building that people cared about and mourned when it was torn down. Buildings become beloved through time and use.
Not everything is always getting worse. The new building will become home for dozens of new families. Children will grow up there. Parents will grow old there. It will include new and bigger community space for the groups who need it. I think there is a little bit of short sightedness and honestly fear in the idea that the best we can hope for his to slow the neighborhood’s decline instead of working together to make it even better for our kids.
Many thanks to all the people making this effort. It’s really worthwhile to save a monument that makes the UWS special
The UWS is special *despite* this run down building covered in scaffolding. What exactly makes it essential?
Newcavendish said “special.”
Dad reads “essential.”
Beyond language comprehension deficiencies, context is key.
To wit: It’s either this, or a new towering hulk of residential architecture soon to be forgotten.
Altho I suppose we could get rid of 80% of all nyc scaffolding stat by turning all facade repairs to entirely new buildings…
This is beginning to become a farce.
I eagerly look forward to seeing Landmark’s reporting of the state of the church. I suspect the number will be higher than the activists imagine. Perhaps not as high at the church maintains, but still it will be tens of millions of dollars with no one to pay for it.
And I don’t think it sets a good precedent for taxpayers to subsidize landmark building maintenance.
“Exactly how the church’s future could be secured was not clearly spelled out on Saturday”. They’ve had a year since the last hearing. When will Gale Brewer be held accountable for her promises here? Share your numbers, share your plan, share a real time table, or let the church move forward with its plan.
Young people are extremely tired of the housing shortage and how unaffordable this neighborhood has become. Landmarking is clearly a contributor to the housing shortage. There will be difficult conversations about what is actually worth saving. The landmarking community is burning a lot of goodwill and credibility by claiming they have the ability to save this building and then failing to do anything concrete. How can you take them seriously after this?
If they are going to try to come up with an alternative, let’s set a deadline. This is getting absolutely ridiculous. Give them a year or two to raise the money and if they can’t do so, have a solid plan B in place. They seem to have this very Trump-esque “you’re not going to tell me what to do so I’m going to dig in my heels” attitude.
And that plan B shouldn’t necessarily be sell to the highest bidder. The goal is not to line the pockets of the Presbyterian Church. If we had a competent representative rather than Brewer they would be finding a compromise solution rather than taking sides.
Familiarity with the subject matter is assumed. These famous people act as if the problem presented itself on Saturday morning. Where have they been the past several years? Why does Gale Brewer only pay attention to this mess largely of her own making the week before Landmarks’ Preservation is going to hold a hearing and then go radio silent until the next hearing date? Ms.Brewer had plenty of plans last year, how much money has she put in the bank for her efforts (not pledges)…actual money in the bank? I am surmising “none,” otherwise this problem would have been solved. Why should the Presbyterian Church be strong armed into selling well below the church’s $33m offered price to a charity that has not demonstrated its own capacity to raise sufficient funds to buy and repair the church, and continue operating it in good repair? Why should that charity then be able to reap the windfall when it sells out to a developer because it can’t maintain the building?
The pro-restoration crowd seems to think the rest of us want the church torn down. That is not true, we would all be delighted if sufficient funds existed to save the church and keep it up forever. But the money has not presented itself, and there is no reasonable indication on the horizon that any philanthropist will show up, while the building continues to fall apart, surrounded by scaffolding, and no repairs taking place; therefore enough is enough. No one is coming with close to the amount of money needed to repair the church and maintain it. Raze it before it falls down and hurts someone.
How much money did Mr. Ruffalo and Ms Schumer contribute to the restoration of the decrepit, collapsing building?
1) Landmark status aside: Why don’t they compromise, make a deal like Citigroup Center did above that church on 54th? Incorporate a modern community center replacement AND then build on top?
2) or just auction it off with minimum bid > repair costs?
3) sell it, save it, destroy it. I’m agnostic as long as Barney Greengrass stays open.
The new building will include a larger community center for the church to use.
They should preserve the building and make it a science library, which is something *actually* useful
The church neglects its building to the point where it is supposedly on the verge of collapse. Then it uses that very neglect to justify selling the building for a $33 million windfall. And only its landmark status is in the way. LOL. Let’s reward the church to the tune of $33 million for its malfeasance and gut the very concept of landmark status. Only in New York!
The Presbyterian Church is one of the wealthiest Protestant denominations in the U.S. Like all religious institutions they are tax exempt. Why this tax exempt church deserves an additional $33 million for neglecting one of its buildings is beyond my comprehension.
The congregation has literally sold off all its assets except, fired all its staff to keep this building up. The national denomination has nothing to support individual congregations – each are self-governing and self-financing. This was a disaster of a landmarking – landmarking a building where there was no feasible way for the church to fund the maintenance and upkeep. Gale promised funds, but 10 years later, the Center raised $50k for repairs. Not nearly enough. No one wants the building to be preserved badly enough to put any money up over the past 10 years, don’t see that changing over the next 10 years.
How long have these so-called ‘stars’ spent in WPC? 15 min? Did Ms Schumer see the ‘kink room’ w massage table, knives, and a foot of leaves blown in from the busted windows? DIid ‘Hulk’ sweep up literal pounds of rat crap and dead carcasses? Did Ms. Brewer wear a gas mask to scrape the mold off the bathroom walls or spend 4 hrs on a Saturday sweating and polishing 40 yrs of oxidation off the beautiful brass on the outside of the building to bring back some of its glory? Whi invested thousands to install central air and fix the faulty wiring? Until they did, please sit down and shut up.
ReGroup Theatre, ALSO a not-for-profit arts organization, spent 4 months there in 2014. I did all of those things as did 20 more of us. When it became clear the building owners and preacher weren’t trustworthy, and even hostile against the improvements, we left. It was heartbreaking after all that work. As much as we lost, we dodged a bullet. So many rooms were locked because they were ‘unsafe’. ‘A flood yrs ago,’ left the ceiling falling and the elevator unworkable, and for some reason, they wouldn’t let us fix it. Sparks fell from the lights before they stopped working. Walls crumbled as we repainted. A young cockeyed optimist, I was essentially leading the rebuilding of a currently burning building. I’m sure the mold that filled the place sped up the decline in my health which started months later. All the improvements we made had reverted to their previous dilapidated state within 6 months. Clearly, the Powers That Be there didn’t want the church saved. They let it fall into such disrepair on purpose. As much as they liked the rent we paid, like ‘The Center’ is clearly experiencing now with their lawsuit, the fact the church wasn’t going to honor their word as landlords.
I turned a blind eye to so many things, as I thought it COULD have been a beautiful space. The architecture IS stunning. The Center can’t even keep up the polishing of the public fixtures. What makes them capable of taking over? If it were possible, we’d have done it. Where were the community activists and politicians when it was salvagable? Has the permanently drunken squatter who had legally taken up the top floor been evicted or did he die? Is the building manager, who was ‘temporarily barred’ for asking every actress to pose nude for him, still there?
I would have loved to see the place saved. Besides their dishonesty as we poured money into the place, I felt like Sisyphus. We left as it clearly had long ago been set up to fail/fall by the management. I’m shocked by only one thing: no one has been killed by the building… yet. As a community resident, I don’t want it to become a skyscraper. Let the city buy it for a decent price and make it into a park or public area.
As one who has been called ‘a GD Red’ for my work, (Yeah, people still speak like that) these ‘stars’ are speaking on something they know nothing about and embarrass everyone. I want to like Mr. Ruffalo, but my one experience with him proved he was an entitled ass.
A few years ago I walked in to inquire about renting space for a production I was working on and was met with a rude, charmless, dismissive woman. Clearly they had no interest in being part of a community, so I’m not surprised that they failed in their responsibility to maintain the building. (Consequently, I walked out and went to the church on 86th and WEA. They were friendly, helpful and professional, and we did the production there. )
“I’d always thought of that sidewalk shed as being there “for as long as I remember,” and Hirshman was now confirming that it was there before I was born [2001].”
Thanks for making 90% of Rag readers feel way, way old lol.
It’s all too sad. These buildings were a part of my childhood. I don’t think I could stand to see them in person. If other builders can build on TOP or incorporate these beautiful structures ( and we have lol seen it ) then why can’t THIS builder, who wants to build a condo? It HAS been done before. Look at the Guggenheim or the Helmsley Palace, etc.
Once again Gail Brewer and her merry band of celebrities show their faces when decisions are being made,
As for solutions? Why bother when you can just make stump speeches?
There is only one solution to this fiasco – money.
But where is it to come from? Ahh, there’s the rub. No one, and I mean no one (I’ve lived on the UWS for 25 years) has:
– a specific plan to fix the church (and hence a real budget)
– identified any sources of funds to achieve the above
– and most critically, even if the church is repaired, a perpetual source of funds to MAINTAIN the church in the long run
Brewer and her cohorts need to answer each of the above before they can be credible. And she has had a lot of time (over six months) since the last time she was seen or heard from at the church. Really quite unbelievable.
It’s wonderful to have the celebrities involved. Since these A-listers are so invested in the project – and so rich and opinionated – it’ll be wonderful for them to just buy the space and fund the repairs. Even at $50M, it’s hardly more than a season or two of some amazingly humorous TV series, or 1-2 artful superhero mish-mash “movies.”
This, plus the $1.99 raised by Brewer, ought to be enough.
Thank you!
Let me restate my position for those readers who might have missed it the first time:
1. The congregation is guilty of malfeasance for not responsibly maintaining and neglecting their building.
2. Any payment, much less $33 million can only be seen as a reward for their neglect.
3. Who actually receives that $33 million? Does anyone have the answer to that?
4. Nothing is preventing the congregation from handing the keys and the deed to the non profit tenant or to the City of New York and walking away. Why isn’t that the solution being discussed?
You’re very wrong on 3 of the 4:
1) The congregation literally spent every penny they have – they sold off two townhomes and fired all their staff. What else could they have done – there are no other sources of funding.
2) Related to one – they asked Gale and Landmarks not to designate a decade ago because their plan to save the building and congregation involved adaptive re-use which would have preserved some of the Church but allowed funds to be generated to preserve the rest. Landmarks ignored, Gale promised funds to help post-landmarking and none were delivered. No rewards, only losers due to the landmarking.
3) The congregation is retaining funds from the sale of the building to build a new 10,000 sf worship and arts space in the new building and to fund an endowment to cover operating costs and new pastoral leadership. All other funds from the sale would be set aside as restricted funds for outreach programs, like food pantries, soup kitchens and homeless outreach at other Presbyterian churches, and to provide funding for the restoration of other landmarked Presbyterian churches, across the City. No one is “getting rich” off of a sale.
4) The congregation spent 130 years building the property – why should they just give it to the Center, who also has a poor track record of maintenance on the building, fundraising, etc.? It isn’t the Center’s building, it is the Church’s to decide what to do without, within the constraints of the landmark laws. Hardship is a allowable reason and this case is an excellent example of why the hardship process exists – 10 years of scaffolding and no progress on finding a tenant with funds to restore… it is time to go.
Get rid of landmark status. Too expensive and difficult to make any repairs or renovations. As a result buildings are left crumbling and in scaffolding for years.
The fact that this event was headlined by two actors who own 8 figure homes protesting the construction of new housing tells you everything you need to know.