Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on August 7, 2017

Im surprised that the board of trustees and congregation doesnt really value the history and beauty of the building enough to find a different kind of resolution for the problems theyre facing, Ronna Blaser, a founder of the West Nineties Neighborhood Coalition, said of the synagogue, Shaare Zedek, which was dedicated in 1923.

Last month, Ms. Blaser and a dozen members of the coalition sat in State Supreme Court in Manhattan for a hearing on Shaare Zedek. (After the attorney generals office approves a sale, the Supreme Court must weigh in, too.) The synagogues leaders plan to sell the property to a developer, who would replace the building with a 14-story condominium tower. The synagogue would own and occupy the first three floors.

Without the deal, valued at $34.3 million, leaders said the synagogue, which was founded in 1837, would fold. The sanctuary is unusable in the winter and summer because it lacks heating and air-conditioning, Michael Firestone, the president of the synagogue, said. And while it seats 1,200 people, only about 80 families attend.

This is an existential issue, Mr. Firestone said.

But in court, neighbors in the coalition questioned the synagogues motivations, citing its exemption from property taxes. They also worried that the high-rise would bring overcrowding.

Justice Debra James of the State Supreme Court dismissed the neighbors complaints, noting that no one who spoke against the plan was affiliated with the synagogue. Your opposition, as sincere as it might be, is really absolutely irrelevant, she said.

This situation is playing out again and again across New York City. Upward mobility, suburban growth and the dissolution of traditional ethnic enclaves have all contributed to empty pews, said Robert P. Jones, chief executive of the nonprofit Public Religion Research Institute. Twenty-seven percent of New Yorkers identified as religiously unaffiliated in 2014, compared with 17 percent in 2007, according to the Pew Research Center.

Congregations find themselves defending the development and even the destruction of their homes in the name of survival.

You just dont get space in New York, said Charles Atkins Jr., the pastor of the French Evangelical Church in Chelsea. Its not given to you. So weve got to make some partners.

His church sold a neighboring building in 2012, followed by its air rights. A new condominium building will stretch over and above the crumbling red brick church, which was built in 1835.

Neighbors there have also mobilized. An 11-story building will be a blight on a low-rise street, said Paul Groncki, president of the neighborhood block association, whose members sued the citys Building Department, accusing it of stonewalling requests for information.

Mr. Groncki said he had all kinds of questions about the income the deal would generate for the church, which he said had low membership and virtually no involvement in the community. None of its parishioners live in the neighborhood, he added.

Mr. Atkins acknowledged the congregations small size, about 30 people, and its far-flung origins. But he said members, who come from all over the city as well as New Jersey, have made a home of the building.

Of the neighbors call for the church to maintain its old facade, he said, How can you ask us for something that our own members arent asking us for?

That is not to say that worshipers are eager to sell the places where their fathers were bar mitzvahed or their children baptized. The remaining members of Shaare Zedek are fiercely devoted to the space, Rabbi Jonah Geffen said.

We have congregants who have been coming to this building every Saturday for 50, 60, 70 years. There are people here who are very sad, Rabbi Geffen said of the sale. But when the congregation voted on the deal last year, the support was unanimous, he added.

A few blocks south of Shaare Zedek, one of the citys most storied churches took a different path.

West Park Presbyterian Church, at Amsterdam Avenue and 86th Street, was built in the 1880s, in part by Leopold Eidlitz, an architect who also worked on the New York State Capitol. It has served as a religious home for Gilded Age robber barons and a rehearsal space for Joe Papp, founder of the Public Theater.

But its congregation aged, moved or simply stopped attending. Only about 30 members remain, said Laurie Kindred, managing director of The Center at West Park, a nonprofit that oversees the churchs facilities. In a bid for survival, church leaders struck a deal in the 2000s with developers to convert part of the church into a residential tower.

Outraged neighbors rallied to preserve the Romanesque Revival structure. They prevailed, and the church was given landmark status in 2010. But some say that status was all but a death knell for the church, where exterior repairs are projected to cost $25 million.

The difference between the churchs current income, which it earns primarily by licensing rooms to community groups, and what it could have gained from development, according to Ms. Kindred, is tens of millions of dollars.

The decision to landmark the building has been detrimental to the church, she said. Rather than being able to focus on its mission, its had to put all of its energy and money into the physical structure.

Back uptown at Shaare Zedek, the synagogues leaders said Justice Jamess ruling may give the synagogue a second life. Mr. Firestone said he hoped that residents of the new condos would find a spiritual home at Shaare Zedek.

And Rabbi Geffen said the emotional process of saying goodbye to the old building was itself an extension of the synagogues renewed mission.

Its a really extraordinary spiritual practice to go through as a community to let go of something to which were really lovingly attached, for the sake of growth, he said. And to go through those things together, thats part of the reason people are engaged in religious communities anyway.

A version of this article appears in print on August 7, 2017, on Page A15 of the New York edition with the headline: To Save A Church, They Sadly Sell It.

Read more from the original source:

Struggling to Survive, Congregations Look to Sell Houses of Worship - New York Times

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