Neighbor News
Neighborhood Church Agrees Terms of Sale
The planned sale to the Continuum Company includes the sanctuary at 40 East 35th Street and four adjacent townhomes.
The Community Church of New York, located at 40 East 35th Street, is in contract to sell its Murray Hill home for $70 million, according to the The Real Deal.
The brick-built Unitarian Universalist church was dedicated in 1948.
The specialist real-estate news site described the sale as “a salvation for the nearly 200-year-old church, which was facing bankruptcy.”
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It reported that the deal required CCNY to first spend some $6 million to buy a nearby townhouse in order to relocate rent-stabilized tenants and a men’s homeless shelter.
“We’ve had some of these tenants for more than 50 years, and the next right thing for them was to be relocated to a place they really wanted to be in,” Rev. Peggy Clarke, the church’s senior minister was quoted as saying. “The whole thing was very risky, but to be honest, religious life right now is risky.”
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The sale includes the sanctuary at 40 East 35th Street and four adjacent townhomes, which needed more than $20 million worth of repairs as real estate taxes ate away at the church’s endowment.
The deal with Bruce Eichner’s Continuum Company is structured as a $69.5 million ground lease that will convert to a sale in the future. The church is now looking to purchase a site for a new home in the same neighborhood.
Eichner told TRD that he plans to build somewhere between 130 and 150 condo units, which will come to market in 2025 or 2026.