Clarkstown Settles With Yeshiva, OKs Asbestos Cleanup At Grace Church

NANUET, NY — Clarkstown officials continue to move forward with their plans for Grace Church in the center of Nanuet, which they have said could possibly include senior housing and parking for the Nanuet school district.

The Clarkstown Town Board bought the property for $4.5 million in 2020, a move that prompted a lawsuit against the town by the Hasidic girls school that tried to buy the property first.

Board members voted unanimously in December to authorize $78,000 for planning the demolition of the church and its outbuildings.

The town received a $500,000 state grant toward demolition, the Rockland County Business Journal reported. In March, the town board voted to spend $720,000 to have asbestos removed from the old church, according to the RCBJ.

The board has also settled the lawsuit, for $200,000, the RCBJ reported.

Patch reached out to Clarkstown Supervisor George Hoehmann about the settlement and the asbestos project but had not heard back before this article was posted.

Ateres Bais Yaakov had been struggling. SEE: Rockland Will Monitor School With Illegal Water, Electric Hook-ups. When news broke that the school wanted to buy the property on Demarest Avenue, some Nanuet residents formed a unit of Citizens United to Protect Our Neighborhoods, known as CUPON of Greater Nanuet.

The settlement with the school came after a Second Circuit panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled in December that there was plausible reason to believe the neighbors' opposition and the town's subsequent actions "predictably" prevented Ateres Bais Yaakov from securing the regulatory approvals necessary to acquire the property, cut off its access to public and private financing, and led to Grace Church’s termination of the contract, according to the appeals panel ruling, which was published in The Journal News.

The settlement requires, in addition to the $200,000 payment, that town officials must undergo training on religious liberty and land use, including on the federal law known as the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, the Rockland County Business Journal reported.

Read the RCBJ's entire article here.