Empty pews
Struggling to survive, congregations look to sell houses of worship
NEW YORK — At first glance, the preservation battle over the nearly century-old synagogue on a tree-lined block of West 93rd Street on the upper West Side of Manhattan looks familiar, even tired. One group wants to save the stately granite building, emphasizing its history, neoclassical architecture and towering stained glass windows. Another group wants to turn it into a high-rise condominium.
But in a twist, it’s the synagogue that is fighting for the change.
Across the city, financially strapped religious congregations, facing dwindling attendance and shrinking donations, are looking for other sources of revenue. Increasingly they are turning to their most valuable asset: location, location, location (and, in some cases, the air above it).
The state attorney general’s office, which must approve all sales of religious properties in New York, received 165 sale petitions in 2016; so far in 2017, it has received 124. The number of petitions has been increasing in recent years, said Doug Cohen, a spokesman for the office.
In New York City’s fevered real estate market, the pace of such deals — and opposition to them — have become especially frenetic, said Renato Matos, a lawyer who advises religious organizations on real estate transactions.
“There’s a tremendous amount of activity,” Matos said.
And in some places across the city, neighbors are cobbling together neighborhood associations and legal alliances to fight the proposed sales.
“I’m surprised that the board of trustees and congregation doesn’t really value the history and beauty of the building enough to find a different kind of resolution for the problems they’re facing,” Ronna Blaser, a founder of the West Nineties Neighborhood Coalition, said of the synagogue, Shaare Zedek, which was dedicated in 1923.
Last month, Blaser and a dozen members of the coalition sat in state Supreme Court in Manhattan for a hearing on Shaare Zedek. (After the attorney general’s office approves a sale, the Supreme Court must, too.) The synagogue’s leaders plan to sell the property to a developer, who would replace the building with a 14-story condominium tower. The synagogue would own and occupy the first three floors.
Without the deal, valued at $34.3 million, leaders said the synagogue, which was founded in 1837, would fold. The sanctuary is unusable in the winter and summer because it lacks heating and air conditioning, said Michael Firestone, president of the synagogue. And while it seats 1,200 people, only about 80 families attend.
“This is an existential issue,” Firestone said.
But in court, neighbors in the coalition questioned the synagogue’s motivations, citing its exemption from property taxes. They also worried that the high-rise would bring overcrowding.
Justice Debra James of the state Supreme Court dismissed the neighbors’ complaints, noting that no one who spoke against the plan was affiliated with the synagogue.
“Your opposition, as sincere as it might be, is really absolutely irrelevant,” she said.
This situation is playing out again and again across New York City. Upward mobility, suburban growth and the dissolution of traditional ethnic enclaves have all contributed to empty pews, said Robert P. Jones, chief executive officer of the nonprofit Public Religion Research Institute. Twenty-seven percent of New York residents identified as religiously unaffiliated in 2014, compared with 17 percent in 2007, according to the Pew Research Center.
That is not to say that worshippers are eager to sell the places where their fathers were bar mitzvahed or their children baptized. The remaining members of Shaare Zedek are fiercely devoted to the space, Rabbi Jonah Geffen said.
“We have congregants who have been coming to this building every Saturday for 50, 60, 70 years. There are people here who are very sad,” Geffen said of the sale. But when the congregation voted on the deal last year, the support was unanimous, he added.
A few blocks south of Shaare Zedek, one of the city’s most storied churches took a different path.
West Park Presbyterian Church, at Amsterdam Avenue and 86th Street, was built in the 1880s, in part by Leopold Eidlitz, an architect who also worked on the New York state Capitol. It has served as a religious home for Gilded Age robber barons and a rehearsal space for Joe Papp, founder of the Public Theater.
But its congregation has aged, moved away or simply stopped attending. Only about 30 members remain, said Laurie Kindred, managing director of The Center at West Park, a nonprofit that oversees the church’s facilities. In a bid for survival, church leaders struck a deal in the 2000s with developers to convert part of the church into a residential tower.
Outraged neighbors rallied to preserve the Romanesque Revival structure. They prevailed, and the church was given landmark status in 2010. But some say that status was all but a death knell for the church, where exterior repairs are projected to cost $25 million.
The difference between the church’s current income, which it earns primarily by licensing rooms to community groups, and what it could have gained from development, according to Kindred, is tens of millions of dollars.
“The decision to landmark the building has been detrimental to the church,” she said. “Rather than being able to focus on its mission, it’s had to put all of its energy and money into the physical structure.”
Back uptown at Shaare Zedek, the synagogue’s leaders said James’ ruling may give the synagogue a second life. Firestone said he hoped that residents of the new condominiums would find a spiritual home at Shaare Zedek.
And Geffen said the emotional process of saying goodbye to the old building was itself an extension of the synagogue’s renewed mission.
“It’s a really extraordinary spiritual practice to go through as a community — to let go of something to which we’re really lovingly attached, for the sake of growth,” he said. “And to go through those things together, that’s part of the reason people are engaged in religious communities anyway.”