Good morning. It’s Monday. Today we’ll look at the future of an arts group operating in a landmark Upper West Side church that wants it out so the building can be demolished.
Is the final act of a complicated landlord-tenant drama about to play out? Will the landlord, a landmark church on the Upper West Side, change the locks now that it has served an eviction notice?
The church says that it has not decided about the locks.
The tenant, an arts group, says that even if it has to move out, it will continue to oppose the church’s plan for a real estate deal valued at more than $30 million. Under that deal, the church, a 135-year-old building on West 86th Street at Amsterdam Avenue, would be replaced by market-rate housing.
That plan has put the church at odds with preservationists and lawmakers. The arts group, the Center at West Park, has called a news conference for this morning and has invited a number of lawmakers, including Mark Levine, the Manhattan borough president, and State Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal, who said on Sunday that “losing the center would be a tremendous loss for artists” across the city.
The center is also counting on boldface names who have supported it in the past couple of years, among them the actors Matt Dillon, Mark Ruffalo and Christian Slater.
“We are trying to resolve this amicably,” Debby Hirshman, the executive director of the center, said on Saturday. No matter what happens, she said, “we will continue both our programming and our commitment to preserving this landmark building.”
The church said the center submitted a proposal on Friday that calls for it to stay in the building for three more years under a new lease. But the church does not appear receptive. Roger Leaf, the chairman of the West Park Administrative Commission, a church panel set up to assist with selling the building, said that the church would review the proposal but that “the eviction is going to happen no matter what.”
The center’s calendar has been filled with its performances and community gatherings nearly every night. Hirshman said the center had become “an entryway and a runway” for the next generation of performers and playwrights as well as for experienced actors. She that the center’s mission would not change if it had to leave the church.
But she said that it would function differently.
“What makes this a unique building for community arts and culture is all of the multiple spaces that are under one roof,” Hirshman said. “It’s not like there’s only this main hall.” The building has smaller spaces that can accommodate groups that draw smaller audiences — or no audiences, if “someone wanting to rehearse” is looking to try out a new play.
The church, bedeviled by a dwindling congregation and a deteriorating building, has long said it could not afford necessary repairs. The congregation, with only 12 members, voted in 2020 to go ahead with the real estate deal. The planned new structure would include a 10,000-square-foot space that the church could use or rent out, just as it has done with the center. The developer would give the church $9 million to design and build out the new space.
Hirshman said the center had shown that it could function as a “self-sustaining not-for-profit arts and culture space.” She said the group announced late last year that it had raised $5 million to $6 million for repairs to the roof, facade and gutters — a project that she said would lead to the removal of the sidewalk shed that has surrounded the building for years.
But she said that the church had refused to give permission for the work. Leaf said the request could come only from the owner of the building, not a tenant.
As for the building’s landmark status, in 2022 the church asked the Landmarks Preservation Commission to lift it, citing hardship: It said it could not afford to maintain the building. It later withdrew that application because, Leaf said, a criterion for hardship is to move for immediate demolition, something the church could not do with the center still in the building.
The center stayed put after its lease expired at the end of 2022. The church took the center to court and won, first in State Supreme Court in Manhattan. It also won two rounds of appeals, most recently in the state’s highest court last month.
Weather
Expect a cloudy day with temperatures in the low 70s. At night, clouds will persist and temperatures will drop to the low 60s.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
In effect until Thursday (Juneteenth).
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METROPOLITAN diary
At the deli
Dear Diary:
I go to the same Lower East Side deli every morning. Many days, a woman who is probably in her 70s or 80s and always dressed in several layers of coats and stockings comes in.
“I’m extra hungry for my bagel today,” she often says.
The sleepy crowd doesn’t usually respond.
One day, though, she opened with something different.
“Quick with my bagel,” she said. “I’ve got someone at home that I don’t trust!”
Intrigued, I asked whom she was referring to.
“Somebody who doesn’t like my pet,” she said.
Turning to the man preparing her bagel, she added: “Not too much butter. You always put too much butter!”
I asked what kind of pet she had.
“A parakeet,” she said. “And I’m afraid of what she might do.”
What was that?
“Don’t make me say it,” she said.
She rushed through an explanation of how, against her better judgment, she had rented her spare room to the granddaughter of a friend and the granddaughter’s boyfriend. Now she was trying to get rid of them.
“This woman isn’t usually awake when I come to the deli in the morning, and today I think she’s up,” she said. “I’ve got to get back there. I don’t trust her!”
With that, she grabbed her buttered bagel off the counter and hurried off to save her parakeet.
— Fletcher Laico
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.
P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.
Hannah Fidelman, Davaughnia Wilson and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].
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James Barron writes the New York Today newsletter, a morning roundup of what’s happening in the city.
The post Curtain Call for Arts Group at Landmark Church? appeared first on New York Times.
