The rowdiest show in town might be Tuesday’s public hearing on the West Park Presbyterian Church’s hardship application to the Landmarks Preservation Commission.
The congregation needs the LPC’s blessing to sell the rotting structureto Alchemy Properties, which would demolish the 135-year-old wreck at Amsterdam Avenue and West 86th Street and put up an apartment tower.
Count on members of the misnamed Center at West Park — an “arts center” that moved a block away after it was booted from the church two years ago — to make noise and muddy the waters.
The arts group, egged on by the New York Times and a few showboating celebrities, claims the church building which needs at least $30 million to restore can easily be fixed up for less, and that the arts group somehow has the right to re-claim its former space there.
In fact, the arts group’s eviction when its lease ended was upheld by the state’s highest court.
It moreover has failed to raise money as it promised to help preserve the church.
The Presbytery of New York applied to the LPC for the hardship exemption on Sept. 11.
A Dec. 1 letter to the LPC from the Presbytery, which oversees 88 congregations, says a hardship designation would “provide critical funding” to allow the congregation to “continue fulfilling its mission of worship and service” and provide significant financial resources” to expand church s services in all five boroughs.
The arts center appears to have a different motivation: to preserve views of board members who live immediately next door and stand to lose them if and when the new building goes up.
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