By Gus Saltonstall
The long-running debate over the possible demolition of the landmarked West Park Presbyterian Church on the Upper West Side was revived during a lengthy community board meeting this week.
On Thursday night, more than 100 people funneled from the brisk autumn evening into the auditorium of the Joan of Arc Middle School on West 93rd Street, between Amsterdam and Columbus, to hear the dueling sides present to Community Board 7’s Preservation Committee, in the debate over the future of the church at the corner of West 86th Street and Amsterdam Avenue.
The meeting comes a month after the church’s congregation submitted a new hardship application to the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. If the commission approves the application, it would strip the more than 130-year-old church of its landmark status, clearing the way for the structure to be demolished and the property sold to a developer who plans to build a 19-story luxury apartment building.
Before the commission casts its vote on whether to grant this hardship application, the UWS’s Community Board 7 must offer its official recommendation as part of the process. After a lengthy discussion and presentations by both sides in the debate, CB7 members did not vote on the matter. But there will be another board meeting on October 29 to allow for additional public testimony and a possible vote.
Leaders in the debate over the hardship application are the Presbytery and the congregation of the church on one side, advocating for demolition; and the Center at West Park, a nonprofit arts organization that operated out of the property for years until this summer, which is fighting to preserve the church.
The Presbytery, which is the official applicant for the hardship application, presented arguments to the board that centered on the physical condition of the church, the amount of money it would cost to restore and renovate the building (which the Presbytery estimates at $40 to $55 million, including removal of the more than 20-year-old sidewalk shed), and the need for the injection of funds that the sale of the property would bring for the Presbytery.
The church is thousands of dollars in debt and had around $500 in cash as of June of this year, according to the Presbytery.
“Losing this landmark is hardly an easy decision for West Park, but the reality is that this is the only solution we can see that would ensure a future for this congregation,” Roger Leaf, the chair of the administration commission for West Park Presbyterian Church, said during his remarks.
Leaf noted that if the sale of the property goes through, the church has pledged to create a West Park Presbyterian Social Justice Fund, which could provide as much as $900,000 annually in support of social services such as food assistance, immigrant services, and homeless shelters.
Michael Hiller, a preservation lawyer representing the Center at West Park, rebutted the Presbytery’s $40 to $55 million estimate to repair and rejuvenate the church. Hiller told the board that repair costs were closer to $5 to $10 million. He also pushed back against the argument that the building is currently unsafe, noting that it was still in active use as both a community and religious facility, until the Presbytery evicted the arts center in June.
The Center at West Park, he said, stands ready to return to the church from the nearby St. Paul and St. Andrew Church at West 86th Street, between West End and Broadway.
“I have checks signed in my hand, $30,000 a month, first month rent, last month rent, and security deposit, and we’re prepared right now to rent the church. In addition, we’re prepared to pay for renovation,” Hiller said as he waved a check in his hand. “We have millions of dollars on hand and another $3 million from state of New York to cover anything we can’t, which we can,” he told the board
Hiller was joined by several Upper West Side elected officials or representatives from their offices, including New York City Councilmember Gale Brewer, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine, State Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal, Assemblymember Micah Lasher, and Public Advocate Jumaane Williams who all voiced their strong support in preserving the church.
“First, that damn building is not falling down, and don’t let anyone tell you it is,” Brewer told the audience. “Second, the cultural capacity interest in the space is phenomenal. Third, this is a building that is landmarked and it is beautiful, when you landmark a building, it is done for a reason and it should continue to stand and be a landmark.”
After the politicians completed their remarks, members of the public delivered testimony, the majority in favor of preserving the church.
In 2022, when the first hardship application was filed to demolish the church, before it was withdrawn shortly ahead of when it was scheduled to be voted on by the Landmarks Preservation Commission, Community Board 7 voted against tearing down the landmarked structure.
The vote three years ago was 24 in favor, 13 opposed, and seven abstentions.
You can watch the full discussion from Thursday night below, which starts around the 31-minute mark.
Subscribe to West Side Rag’s FREE email newsletter here. And you can Support the Rag here.
“Hiller told the board that repair costs were closer to $5 to $10 million.” How is this estimate plausible? It’s going to cost $7 million to do a minor upgrade to River Run Playground (not including any updates at all to the bathroom there).
https://www.westsiderag.com/2025/09/04/uws-river-run-playground-might-lose-its-river
independent expert hired by LPC from Old Structures testified in 2023 at the first LPC hearing that he examined the building and that the cost would be something like $1.6 M to stabilize the facade so that the scaffolding can come down. Report is public info on the LPC website I believe
As a landmarked building all the repairs have to be done “in kind,” meaning modern materials cannot be used and all the repair plans have to be approved by LPC. That will add millions in materials and design professional fees to the repair costs above what a non landmarked building would incur.
Just out of curiosity, have we ever discovered how much the Center has actually raised to buy and repair the church? This has been going on for years so it should be a tidy sum with all the star studded benefit events including the most recent on in the Hamptons! As noted in the article, the Center’s rep stated: “We have millions of dollars on hand and another $3 million from state of New York to cover anything we can’t, which we can,” he told the board.”
How many millions does you have Mr. Hiller? The Planning Board should have demanded to see the bank statement before letting him continue with his diatribe. After all, Hiller used the plural “millions” so it should be at least two.
That is because NYC is run by democrats and most of that money is stolen
Names, dates, dollar amounts?
Or would that be expecting too much?
you don’t seem to have a clue about costs involved
right. Get a professional vetted by This Old House website for a more correct estimate. Try that.
Credit where it’s due, The Center at West Park has put more effort into prevent new housing from being built than I’ve put into anything in my life.
clearly more housing is needed. BUT NOT
in NYC. The City is out of space.
We need to have a population and building
restrictions Too many people not enough
room
Now that’s an idea!!!
Luxury apartments hardly count as “new housing,” their supply is ample.
Building housing that 99% of city residents can’t afford accomplishes nothing.
Think of housing as musical chairs. Building an expensive new apartment for some rich person to move into frees up the older/cheaper apartment they moved from for someone else (and so on down the line).
Conversely, if you stop building housing then rich folks bid up the existing units and the poor at the bottom are pushed onto the streets.
Not to mention the property taxes on the new units help pay for teachers, police and other city workers. I would hardly call that accomplishing ‘nothing’
NIMBYs have a lot of time on their hands
Are you calling those opposed to 19-story luxury apartments in favor of a cultural space NIMBYs?
It is usually the people in those buildings getting called that. 😀 (when they are opposed to affordable housing, addiction treatment programs, shelters etc…)
I don’t care what they do. Just do something. It is unbelievable how long this has taken. Everyone is tired of the scaffolding on that corner. Next they will probably ask for an independent appraisal of the cost and that will take another year.
The only hill I will die-on regarding this is that there’s no way repairing this church is $5-10 million after 20 years of neglect. The irony is this Community Board meeting was held in Joan of Arc Middle School, which spent >$10M for a ten-year renovation project with a MUCH more basic facade.
Stopped in at their rummage sale for a few minutes last week . First time I ever stepped foot in there. It smelled old and decrepit. I would be nervous of spending a long amount of time in that building. Serves no purpose anymore, get rid of it.
This is called “demolition by neglect.” That is how entities get rid of important buildings. They deliberately fail to maintain them and then claim they deserve special treatment for their heinousness.
Demolition by poverty / the church spent 100% of the money they had, fired all their staff and sold all their other assets and still didn’t have enough money to get rid of the sidewalk shed…
Just tear it down and build an apartment building. They can put community space on the ground floor. This is hideous and dangerous.
Community space on the ground floor of apartments does seem like a great compromise.
I would still be wary since a lot of those so-called luxury buildings are cheaply made and not built to last.
If the two sides combined forces to build something high quality, with an arts space and some affordable units, that would benefit the community.
Has this been proposed?
The Center is waiting to evict the Church and my bet is they will then be “shocked” that the repair costs exceed their estimates. At that point they will file a hardship sell the building for $40 million and make a lot of $$$
Yeah, this is funny to think about… but it doesn’t line up with what I saw from the speakers at the meeting and the conversations in the audience.
I think many have very sincere beliefs about the value they’ve gotten from the arts in our community and from the Center at West Park in particular. Which is admirable: The arts are valuable, and the Center seems great! And they’re still operating in a new space. I left the meeting excited to check out some performances and support.
I also think that deep down many are less focused on the arts but have very sincere beliefs that the building shouldn’t be sold, and more importantly that something newer and *especially taller* shouldn’t get built there.
I think they’re sincere in that, but also I think that it mostly stems from thinking about how it will impact the view from their personal windows.
All those people live right nearby?
Of course “all” (not my word) would be a bit of a generalization, but considering it was a meeting of the Upper West Side community and the church is in the Upper West Side, I would guess that “many” (the word I used) or maybe even most live near it, yes.
And it’s been covered elsewhere that four members of the Center’s board live pretty nearby, in next-door buildings that overlook the church
They can’t evict the church. The church owns the building. The church evicted them, presumably because they want that developer payout, from which they’ll gain a lot more than selling it to the center (which doesn’t appear to be on the table).
I wondered about that. Why NOT just sell the building to the arts center, since they have “millions” to spend? BUT it would have to be with the proviso that it maintain its landmark status. I bet that will send them back to wherever they are not the church evicted them.
However many millions the arts center (allegedly) has, they cannot possibly afford to both buy the building and repair it. Does the arts center really think the church, with multimillion dollar third party bids in hand, will just sign over the building at $0???
Enough already. The arts center can operate out of an art space in the new building. They should be able to afford it (given their alleged millions) and should be greatful for the accessible upgrade.
I think that has been their plan all along. To swindle/strong arm the congregation out of its sole asset.
Please please please do not let it be another “luxury” particleboard and cheap PVC pipe, tax giveaway building where closets rent at $8,000 to throwaways from Westchester and the elevators always breakdown. That is the last thing that we need in this neighborhood. Not only because it diminishes the quality of life for those living near these buildings, but lets be honest, the renters themselves of these buildings are being scammed at a huge interest rate.
“Throwaways from Westchester”? What could you possibly mean by that?
Please build more housing and stop listening to aging yuppies who cling to the past, and don’t understand economics.
Also, they don’t build high rise buildings out of particle board.
Want to bet? Check your walls.
Yeah, they havent paid a dime of taxes on that building for 130 years and now they want landmark designation removed to SELL it to a developer and cash in on it while the city gets exactly $0.
After 130 years free ride, if there isnt enough congregation to maintain the building it should become city property.
The city will get millions in taxes as the property moves on the tax rolls. You want this to become city-owned property? The $50mm repair budget will balloon to $500mm if we do this the way we do city capital projects.
FYI, no non-profits pay property taxes, nothing special with this one
I don’t think it’s fair to say they’re “cashing in.”
The church is exempt from taxes like all religious organization. It’s a non-profit, and the Presbyterian Church in particular is deeply committed to supporting and uplifting communities in need.
The church remains a nonprofit regardless of whether they sell. They won’t be making money on this sale, and as they made clear any earnings they get would be used for social programs to support the city and its most needy inhabitants.
I agree that the church has really not been very honorable in this whole situation. There are a lot of potential win-win solutions here but from what I can tell they are just looking to maximize profits, which shouldn’t be their mission, particularly given that you correctly noted that they have had a sweetheart deal for over a century.
This issue will never go away. In 25 years there will be more meetings and public input.
It’s like the jelly of the month club – the gift that keeps on giving.
I attended the meeting last night and I’m very glad to see it covered here in a balanced way.
The West Park Presbyterian Church representatives gave a compelling and fact-based presentation filled with images and analysis. I was impressed. The opponents of the church were passionate, but I didn’t see any evidence to back up anything they said. Councilwoman Brewer was loud, but “the damn building isn’t falling down!” is not a fact-based response to images of the building doing exactly that: Walls leaning and large pieces of rock breaking off and falling to the ground.
And while the majority of public comments were indeed opposed to the hardship application, it’s worth noting that around 1 in 3 of the speakers was in favor of it.
You can see this in the video of the session, which was nearly 3 hours long.
Thanks for sharing and covering, WSR! It’s really important that the interests of the whole UWS community, not just the few in the crowd last night, are considered in this process.
The church allowed, on purpose, those conditions to be created. Their presentation is irrelevant to that basic fact. They are their own slumlords. Maybe they should have altered their religious practice to draw more people.
The church spent every dime it had. It fired all its staff and sold the other two properties it owned to maintain the building. Not demolition by neglect, demolition by poverty.
And surely you can’t believe at the same time:
-That the church has behaved nefariously over the last decade to maximize their profits by selling the de-landmarked building, and this profiteering is bad
-That instead of that they should have behaved nefariously over the last decade to maximize their profits by making as much money as possible off their congregants
Please watch the video. It’s clear that they spent *all* their money–down to their last few hundred plus taking on millions of debt–trying to preserve the church. They can’t reverse or prevent the ongoing decline without any resources to do so.
“Maybe they should have altered their religious practice to draw more people.” Surely you’re not saying that a church’s goal should be to maximize its revenue, at the expense of its community’s religious beliefs?
Agreed I find Brewer’s approach to this whole issue to be a blight on her career.
She pushed to landmark the building and has enabled this push to try to ignore the actual costs of keeping the building standing.
My main knock on the church is they should have pursued the hardship right at the point of landmarking. There could be a clearer discussion. After all the shed had been over the building for ten years at that point. Instead they waited another decade, which frankly muddies the waters.
Unfortunately there is no way the hardship would have been approved at the point of land marking. Gale Brewer promised millions to fix up the church and said if they just used the Center more it would all be taken care of. No way landmarks would have approved a hardship until they let that play out. It is too long, and all of this was known by everyone except Gale at time of the landmarking.
That’s a fair point.
Not long ago I saw a beautiful, highly professional production of Puccini’s La Bohème in the main sanctuary which has a great acoustic. And the placed was packed with music lovers.
The arts center can find another great space if they have $30,000 a month to spend. And that building will cost way more then 5 to 10 million to restore it. There are so many Churches that have dwindling congregations and the space doesn’t particularly work well as an arts center.
They should let a new building go up and let the city get some tax income for the property.
> Hiller was joined by several Upper West Side elected officials or representatives from their offices, including New York City Councilmember Gale Brewer, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine, State Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal, Assemblymember Micah Lasher, and Public Advocate Jumaane Williams who all voiced their strong support in preserving the church.
Stop voting for these losers!
If people were to stop voting for them, THEN they would be losers; that hasn’t happened.
Democracy 101.
Here’s the playbook: You’re a church so you’re tax exempt anyway. You’re sitting on a property that a luxury real estate developer values at between $35 and $50 million – just to bulldoze! Your “parent” church is worth hundreds of millions of dollars but, instead of being a responsible owner, The Presbytery and West Park congregation allow the property to become derelict, to fall apart and become – in the Presbytery’s own testimony – dangerous. So the church creates a derelict situation than cries HARDSHIP! because of their own actions (or inaction). If Landmarks allows owners to take advantage of a loophole that permits them to neglect a property than sell it to the highest bidder – than there simply is no landmark status any more.
And by the way, how can anyone in their right mind be on the side of this Presbytery when it acts like it’s mission is real estate speculation. What’s next? I hear Temple Emanu-El and St. Patrick’s Cathedral are sitting on some pretty valuable property. They should just shut their doors and stop maintaining their property and then claim hardship! Because what this city really needs is more luxury high rise, residential buildings.
(BTW, before I am attacked by the luxury housing lovers on here, this last paragraph was satirical.)
Please, watch the video from the meeting. It’s very clear the Presbytery does not “act like its mission is real estate speculation.” They talked at length about how any profits from the sale will be used first to pay down their crushing debt from trying to maintain the building and then to endow a fund to help the needy in NYC.
this building has outlived it’s usefulness. preserving it is pointless. an old church facade is it’s only redeeming thing.
This is no longer a real congregation. This building is a public safety hazard. This building has long been an eyesore. Any reasonable estimate on repair would run into the tens of millions of dollars.
The neighborhood doesn’t need celebrity whiners. The neighborhood needs more housing.
A multipurpose building could be built on the site — a church on the ground floor, together with an auditorium and community spaces. There is plenty of room for all these facilities because they currently exist on the site. Apartments could be put on top. The current building is not beautiful — and inside it feels claustrophobic.. Surely, this combination would be a win-win for all concerned?
Unless it’s recently been changed, the name of the religious entity is “West-Park Presbyterian Church,” with a hyphen.
And it’s so ugly! Why does The Center wish to perpetuate ugliness on the UWS? Get rid of it.
Ugly?
Citing “The Masterful 1889 West-Park Presbyterian Church” (https://daytoninmanhattan.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-masterful-1884-west-park.html):
• “the magnificent Romanesque Revival building, considered by many to be the best example of the style in a religious building in the city”
• “Hefty arches and rugged stonework supported gables and towers — a delight of asymmetrically placed openings and angles. Anchoring it all was a monumental corner tower[…].”
• “Henry Kilburn’s masterful and rugged West-Park Church […] — a masterpiece of Romanesque Revival architecture.”
From “The AIA Guide to New York City (Third Edition)”:
• “A fine Romanesque Revival edifice in brownstone. Were it and its tower not overwhelmed by the grim apartment building to the north, it would be one of the West Side’s loveliest landmarks.”
Says “From Abyssinian to Zion: A Guide to Manhattan’s Houses of Worship” (https://dokumen.pub/from-abyssinian-to-zion-a-guide-to-manhattans-houses-of-worship-9780231500722.html):
• “One of the finest Romanesque sanctuaries in Manhattan, West-Park Presbyterian Church is a landmark in every sense but the official one.”
• “It is marked on the skyline by a corner tower with bell-shaped roof so vigorous that it stands in confident counterpoint to even the enormous Belnord apartment block across the avenue.”
Ugly?
Citing “The Masterful 1889 West-Park Presbyterian Church” (https://daytoninmanhattan.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-masterful-1884-west-park.html):
• “the magnificent Romanesque Revival building, considered by many to be the best example of the style in a religious building in the city”
• “Hefty arches and rugged stonework supported gables and towers — a delight of asymmetrically placed openings and angles. Anchoring it all was a monumental corner tower culminating in a bell-shaped cap.”
• “Henry Kilburn’s masterful and rugged West-Park Church is little changed after more than a century standing sentinel at 86th Street and Amsterdam Avenue — a masterpiece of Romanesque Revival architecture.”
From “The AIA Guide to New York City (Third Edition)”:
• “A fine Romanesque Revival edifice in brownstone. Were it and its tower not overwhelmed by the grim apartment building to the north, it would be one of the West Side’s loveliest landmarks.”
Says “From Abyssinian to Zion: A Guide to Manhattan’s Houses of Worship” (https://dokumen.pub/from-abyssinian-to-zion-a-guide-to-manhattans-houses-of-worship-9780231500722.html):
• “One of the finest Romanesque sanctuaries in Manhattan, West-Park Presbyterian Church is a landmark in every sense but the official one.”
• “It is marked on the skyline by a corner tower with bell-shaped roof so vigorous that it stands in confident counterpoint to even the enormous Belnord apartment block across the avenue.”
Notes the Landmarks Preservation Commission (https://www.landmarkwest.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/LPC_West-Park.pdf):
• “considered to be one of the best examples of a Romanesque Revival style religious structure in New York City. The extraordinarily deep color of its red sandstone cladding and the church’s bold forms with broad, round-arched openings and a soaring tower at the corner of West 86th Street and Amsterdam Avenue produce a monumental and distinguished presence along those streets.”
• “Kilburn’s design was a boldly-massed Romanesque Revival-style edifice faced in deep red sandstone and anchored by a soaring corner
tower with a bell-shaped roof. The church would exemplify what was then a new interest in medieval Romanesque forms and palettes, such as in its heavy round arches, rock-faced stonework, massive tower, and earth-toned (reddish brown) materials. The building appears to have been inspired by the work of Henry Hobson Richardson, one of the major and most influential architects of the nineteenth century and one of the main champions of the rugged, Romanesque Revival mode that is evident at West Park.”
Beauty is, of course, in the eye of the beholder, except perhaps when the beholder is a philistine.
It is amazing how people with no connection or financial interest in a property get so much say.
Seems to me that all this fuss is about whether or not 12 congregants can earn money from the sale of a tax exempt building because their faith community is dying out.
The congregants don’t get the proceeds, it goes to the church body that owns the building.
“Before the commission casts its vote…Community Board 7 must offer its official recommendation as part of the process.”
Of course a CB’s recommendation is only advisory, no matter what it votes. So the LPC can – and should – ignore any vote that doesn’t end this farce by allowing the owner/landlord of the building – the Presbytery (and its congregation) – to assert its sole and excusive LEGAL right to dispose of its property as IT sees best fit.
While I support the landmarks law and the creation of the LPC, and almost all the work it has done over the decades, the LPC has now become an impediment, and is usurping the Presbytery’s legal power and authority to determine whether IT can make a decision on ITS building.
The majority of estimates to repair the building to a truly safe and inhabitable condition are between $20 and $50 million. The Center has not even come close to raising the LOWER figure – even with celebs worth over $500 million between them. I think that says a lot.
End this fiasco NOW and grant the Application. The developer will be giving the Presbytery thousands of sq ft of space to continue services and programs. And THAT is, or SHOULD be, the only thing that matters.
Just because the building is old doesn’t mean it deserves landmark status. There’s nothing about the building that deserves to be preserved. Further, when you repair a landmarked building, it isn’t just a matter of getting the lowest bids on the construction work. The LPC will chime in and force repairs to “align with materials originally used”, causing delays and added expense. It can be a real nightmare to deal with them. And, in this case, it’s preposterous since it shouldn’t have been landmarked to begin with. The owners wish to move on and not be bogged down with this financial headache and these government entities should get out of their way. This has gone on way too long. And, if it weren’t for the LPC, this likely could have been settled more quickly and more reasonably. Everyone involved has better things to do with their time in service of the people and City of NY. I understand this would mean we might be losing the proposed arts center, which is unfortunate . But perhaps there is another space for that could accommodate the center without being as divisive and contentious as the church space continues to be.
“Just because the building is old doesn’t mean it deserves landmark status.”
Who said it deserves landmark status just because it’s old? (Old? Relative to what?) A very flimsy straw man indeed.
“There’s nothing about the building that deserves to be preserved.”
Tell them:
• https://daytoninmanhattan.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-masterful-1884-west-park.html
• https://dokumen.pub/from-abyssinian-to-zion-a-guide-to-manhattans-houses-of-worship-9780231500722.html, p. 293
• https://www.landmarkwest.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/LPC_West-Park.pdf
• “The AIA Guide to New York City (Third Edition)”, pp. 316–317
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West-Park_Presbyterian_Church
You may not value Romanesque Revival architecture, but the church building is one of the city’s palmary examples of that style from the later 19th century. That’s why it was landmarked.
It would be a profound tragedy if such a rich city (and such a rich neighborhood) could not save such a unique and significant landmark, testimony as it is to an important moment in the history of American architecture and the development of the UWS.
The only housing that should replace this landmark church is a Mitchell-Lama Co-op building, certainly yet another luxury apartment building. Wrong choice. It is the mix of incomes that makes the UWS what it is, or once was. Only this kind of building allows the creative professionals to remain in the neighborhood, and it should be restricted to them (me), with a discount supermarket/general store on the first floor.
The parenthetical in the last sentence gives the game away.
Why should your interests and wants be prioritized above anyone else’s? Any argument for why can be applied just as easily to say that someone else’s interests and wants should be prioritized over *yours*.
We have to consider what’s best for everyone in our neighborhood and society in the aggregate.
The city should just take it over for a dollar. The congregation should not make any money in this.
Are you suggesting that the building should be sold and replaced, but the proceeds should not be kept by the congregation members and instead be used for programs to support city inhabitants?
(https://www.ilovetheupperwestside.com/west-park-presbyterian-church-announces-30m-social-justice-fund-pending-landmark-sale-decision/)
If it ends up being razed, affordable housing should replace it.
It’s amazing to me that Brewer et al have, for the past several years, made many sweeping statements regarding the Church. At one point she shaid she could raise all the funds necessary. Instead after all this time we don’t have:
– A proper plan from an engineering firm willing to put their signature on that outlines clearly what needs to be done
– A corresponding budget for the plan (this would avoid the is it $5 -10M or $40-55M argument since we will have an estimate based on a specific plan)
– A maintenance budget … fixing it is one thing, maintaining another
– A business plan that shows how the church will contniue to operate sustainably with a steady revenue stream based on whatever activities they specifiy which will generate monthly revenues
– Confirmed funds (bank account statements and/or specific, signed commitments from funders)
Absent the above information, it becomes a shouting match between the two interested parties.
Waste of time for everyone.
For the love of everything holy, please tear this down already!