Celebs Join Fight To Save UWS Church: Hearing Set For Tuesday

UPPER WEST SIDE, NY — Local stars joined the fight this weekend to save an 133-year-old Upper West Side church from becoming a high-rise apartment building.

Actors Mark Ruffalo, Amy Schumer and Wendell Pierce spoke at a rally Saturday at the West Park Presbyterian Church at the corner of Amsterdam Avenue and 86th Street.

The rally took place just days before Tuesday's upcoming Landmarks Preservation Commission hearing on whether to grant the church's hardship application that would strip its landmark status and clear the path to demolition.

“These landmarks and community centers are getting eaten up every day," Ruffalo, an Upper West Side resident, said at the rally. "We need to preserve them for our community. It's not only an active church where the community observes and worships —it’s a landmarked space for the arts, theatre, public assistance and a space for all of us to come together."

The church has served as home to the Center at West Park since 2016, a nonprofit performing arts center. However, its congregation has dwindled to 12 people, and a sidewalk shed has surrounded the building for the last 22 years.

If the demolition and redevelopment was approved, the new space would feature a theater and a ground floor church space.

"The idea that we would even consider changing this landmark, and destroying it, is corrupt," Piece said. He began his remarks by saying he had walked to the rally from his Upper West Side home.

The West-Park Presbyterian Church has fallen into a continuing state of crumbling disrepair over the decades, in part due to its landmark designation in 2010 that makes it more challenging to get renovation work approved, the congregation argued.

Following the approval of the sale to Alchemy, an attorney for the church filed a "hardship application" with the Landmarks Preservation Commission to remove its designation.

The sale is contingent on this hardship application being approved and the original building's demolition.

You can find out more about the public hearing and meeting by the Landmarks Preservation Commission HERE, you can sign up to be a speaker HERE, and you can watch the livestream of the vote slated to start around 1 p.m. on the Commission's YouTube page.

Since 1965, there have only been 19 hardship applications filed with the commission, 13 have been approved, four denied, and two never voted on.

"What we don’t need is another luxury condo building with no affordable housing," Upper West Side Council Member Gale Brewer said about the church's possible redevelopment.

Read More:

• Arts Center Secures $3.5M In Effort To Stop Demolition Of UWS Church
• UWS Community Board Says No To Local Church's Demolition Request
• Demolition Of Crumbling 132-Year-Old UWS Church? Local Board Votes No
• Opening Meeting Set For Upper West Side Church's Fate
• UWS Church Pushes To Lose Landmark Status To Save Building: Report