Mamdani UWS Endorsee Joins Push to Save Church
One of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s primary picks forayed into a thorny housing debate before even starting his term as the Upper West Side’s new Assembly member.
Assembly nominee Eli Northrup handily won the district spanning parts of the Upper West Side, Morningside Heights and Harlem over primary challenger Stephanie Ruskay last month, despite strong support for her campaign from real estate donors. Now the public defender and progressive has already entered the fray, throwing his newfound influence behind a contentious neighborhood battle over the future of West-Park Presbyterian Church.
The Landmarks Preservation Commission is expected to decide soon whether to grant a hardship application that the congregation needs to move forward with demolition and consummate a 2022 deal with developer Kenneth Horn of Alchemy Properties. Alchemy agreed to pay $33.4 million to build a market-rate condo tower on the site, at 65 West 86th Street, with 10,000 square feet of space set aside for worship and community use.
A slew of high-profile advocates, however, are vying to keep the landmarked building standing, including actors Mark Ruffalo, Laurence Fishburne and Matthew Broderick, along with veteran local Council member Gale Brewer, who was instrumental in winning landmark status for the church.
Now Northrup appeared in a video with Ruffalo last week, calling upon social media followers to sign a petition to save West-Park, citing the church’s onetime role as a performing arts center and community space.
Arts nonprofit The Center at West Park, which has now relocated to a nearby church, is offering more than $12 million to restore the existing building on 86th and Amsterdam, with upwards of $7 million from that total going to the congregation over the next decade at a rate of $720,00 per year. The remaining $5 million would fund repairs, including fixes to the building’s crumbling facade and removal of a longstanding sidewalk shed.
Church administrators chimed in with op-eds this week, highlighting the challenges of tackling the building’s costly maintenance issues, along with their plans to use proceeds from the Alchemy sale to fund an endowment up to $30 million toward the church’s social justice goals. Another Daily News op-ed last week argued that granting West-Park’s hardship application would jeopardize landmark protections for buildings across the city.
LPC closed its public comment period on the hardship application last week. Other government figures signed a letter calling upon the commission to preserve the church, including Brewer, Comptroller Mark Levine, Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, Assembly member and Congressional nominee Micah Lasher and State Senator Erik Bottcher.
Notably absent from the star-studded campaign to block the development is Mayor Mamdani, who is likely to steer clear of any rhetoric that contradicts his goal to boost housing development wherever possible across the five boroughs.
His guy Eli, however, has calculated that championing the West-Park rescue campaign won’t conflict with the housing agenda laid out in his platform, which notes that “luxury units sit empty as rents rise and small businesses and local institutions are squeezed out.”
Another housing platform plank, support for faith-based institutions seeking to build affordable housing on their land, hasn’t gained traction as a viable alternative in the West-Park debate. Instead, Northrup has made saving West-Park his cross to bear, abundance bros be damned.
What we’re thinking about: Do you think New York City’s landmarks preservation law is too restrictive or not robust enough? Let me know at ben.miller@therealdeal.com.
A thing we’ve learned: The Bronx, the birthplace of hip-hop, will welcome the nation’s first School of Hip Hop this fall. The Department of Education approved the school in December, which will begin with ninth grade and incorporate hip-hop into its curriculum and the bells between classes.
— Spencer Davis
Elsewhere…
— Mayor Zohran Mamdani selected a diverse set of 18 legal experts, including law school professors and public defenders, to join a group that recommends New York City’s next judges, amNY reports. Mamdani issued an executive order in January requiring the committee to engage the wider legal community in their efforts to recruit new judges.
— Jewish leaders in New York City called on Mamdani to temper his words about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the country’s war in Gaza after a man stabbed a Jewish man and an Asian man on the Upper West Side, Gothamist reports. Victims and witnesses told investigators that the attacker yelled “Allahu akbar” during the stabbings, according to Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, and police charged the man, Raul Morales, with a hate crime for the alleged antisemitic attack.
— Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman raised $1.6 million more than he initially disclosed, City & State reports. Campaign finance documents from Blakeman, who is running to unseat incumbent Gov. Kathy Hochul, initially indicated his campaign raised around $8 million in total since it launched, falling $3 million short of the $11 million figure he touted to the New York Post. These updated Board of Elections records now match his original estimate.
— Spencer Davis
Closing time
Residential: The most expensive residential sale recorded Friday was $7.8 million for 346 Kent Avenue, PH1B. The sponsor sale is in the One Domino Square condo building. Two Trees’ Domino Development Partners sold the unit to Siwei Wang.
Commercial: The most expensive commercial transaction was $7.3 million for 236 39th Street. The industrial manufacturing building in Sunset Park has a gross floor area of 15,600 square feet.
New to the Market: The highest price for a residential property hitting the market was $17 million for 37 Sidney Place. The Brooklyn Heights townhome is 7,000 square feet. It last sold in 2022 for $15.1 million. Sotheby’s International Realty has the listing.
Breaking Ground: The largest new building permit filed was for a proposed 236,814-square-foot, 12-story building at 2020 Fulton Street in Bedford Stuyvesant. Annya Ramirez-Jimenez of Marvel is the applicant of record.
— Joseph Jungermann
