July 14, 2009

NEW YORK – The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission summoned the West Park Presbyterian Church to a hearing today as a first step toward seizing control of the Church's building as a municipal landmark.

The Commission had declined to include the Church in the Upper West Side Central Park West Historic District which it created in 1990.

The Rev. Robert Brashear, pastor of West Park Presbyterian Church, spoke against the action. He noted that, as a result of the Commission's desire to impose a landmark designation, the Church lost a development opportunity which would have covered the $25-million cost of restoring and renovating the church building at the corner of Amsterdam Avenue and West 86th Street in Manhattan. The plan called for the demolition of the smaller parish house building behind the church edifice and replacing it with a 21-story tower that would contain three floors of space for the church and 18 floors of residential space. The developer with which the Church had been working for two years, Richman Housing Resources, withdrew two weeks after notice of the landmarks hearing was published. They cited a minimum of $250,000 additional expense in dealing with the Landmarks Commission with no certainty of resolution.

The building is in such a poor and unsafe state that the congregation has moved its worship and ministry to the United Methodist Church of St. Paul and St. Andrew two blocks away. The action of the Landmarks Preservation Commission today is the first time that the Commission has sought to impose landmark regulations on an individual church over its objection since it landmarked the building of St. Paul and St. Andrew in 1981, creatively labeling it a "masterful example of scientific eclecticism." That congregation has had to suffer for nearly three decades with the cost of repairing and maintaining a building which does not serve well its ministry.

Under landmark regulation, any repair or maintenance requiring a building permit or affecting the exterior appearance in any way must be approved by the Landmarks Commission. Unlike the building code, there are no objective standards in the landmarks law governing either criteria for designation or for alteration – everything is determined at the whim of the 11 members of the Commission. As a result, no church which has been designated in the 44 year history of the landmarks law has ever been released from landmark control except in two cases of destruction by fires. The Landmarks Law effectively requires that a nonprofit owner of a designated building must exhaust all of its assets to support the building before it might qualify for "hardship" relief from regulation.

The Rev. N. J. L'Heureux, Jr., Executive Director of the Queens Federation of Churches and Chairman of the New York State Interfaith Commission on Landmarking Religious Property, told the Commissioners that the unanimous action of Congress in adopting the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act in 2000 was heavily influenced by the New York City LPC's aggression against religious properties in the City. That law, known as RLUIPA, requires that any zoning or landmarking restriction on religious property which burdens religious practice must be justified by a "compelling state interest" for which there is no less restrictive means of achieving. It permits the recovery of plaintiff's attorney fees. He noted that the Commission's action is a clear indication of illegal "spot zoning" to stop development and restoration inasmuch as the Commission had already declined to designate the building in 1990.

The Commission's decision to schedule a designation hearing was triggered in February by false accusations made by Upper West Side preservationist groups claiming that the Church had commenced an illegal demolition last Winter when it hired contractors to do emergency repairs following a burst water pipe. As is customary in these hearings, the Commission accorded a group of neighbors claiming to be "Friends of West Park" (but wholly unrelated to the Church) status as if an opposing litigant in arguing that the Church should be stripped of control over its property. The Church is not permitted to cross examine the statements made by these persons who bear no responsibility for their assertions.

Queens Federation of Churches