Why Mark Ruffalo and Wendell Pierce Are Fighting for a Crumbling Church

For years, a conflict over whether to tear down one of New York City’s historic churches, a 19th-century Romanesque Revival building on the Upper West Side, has been cast in epic terms, as a battle between the little people and big business.

In this case, however, those who see themselves as representing the little people include a growing list of New York celebrities.

And big business? That would be a real estate firm working with the tiny congregation of the West Park Presbyterian Church, which says it cannot afford to fix up the deteriorating building and hopes to sell it to a developer to build new luxury apartments on the site.

What has ensued is a perplexing tug of war for the moral high ground, set against the backdrop of a long-running conflict over who feels like they should have control over the city’s future.

“It’s about the people versus the corporations in this city,” as Mark Ruffalo, the actor and a church neighbor, put it at a public hearing this month. He was arguing in favor of saving the church building, which has been on the corner of Amsterdam Avenue and West 86th Street since the 1880s.

Roger Leaf, the chairman of the West Park Administrative Commission, which was created by the Presbytery of New York in 2020 to help the church manage the space and find a buyer, says the congregation of about a dozen people wants to stop its financial bleeding and use proceeds from the real estate deal for better causes, including serving needy people across the city.

“It’s ironic that the wealthy neighbors of this church, who have multimillion apartments, who have windows overlooking this space, are claiming that they are the little guys,” he said.

The actual story is long, complicated and bitter, involving a continuing lawsuit, several conflicting engineering assessments and accusations of bad faith from both sides.

It is another example of how houses of worship, faced with declining membership, have turned to private development to rejuvenate themselves.

And, more broadly, it represents New York City’s many fraught attempts to balance growth and preservation, a conversation that has become more consequential as the city struggles with a housing shortage and officials hunt for places to put new homes — even luxury ones.

But the entry of Mr. Ruffalo and a number of celebrities — the actor Wendell Pierce, the comedian Amy Schumer, the rapper Common and more — into the fight over the church, more than two decades after it first began, has added an unusual twist to a common city conflict.

Mr. Ruffalo even cornered Mayor Eric Adams at the Tribeca Film Festival this month to plead his case. The meeting led to another more formal one on Thursday with members of City Hall, including the deputy mayor for housing, economic development and work force, Maria Torres-Springer, and church leaders, who find it baffling that their quest to destroy the building has turned into a high-profile political melodrama.

All sides agree about the storied history of the church and its architectural significance. The landmarks commission praised the “extraordinarily deep color of its red sandstone cladding” and its “monumental and distinguished presence,” which it said made it “one of the Upper West Side’s most important buildings.” West Park became known in the 1970s and 1980s as an early ally of the antiwar movement and L.G.B.T.Q. people, Mr. Leaf said.

But around the same time, the church became a flashpoint in the city’s real estate battles.

As early as the 1980s, West Park fought against preservationist regulations that would limit how it could use its property, arguing that it should be excluded from a historic district in the neighborhood.

Church members had been looking for developers to shape a new future for their deteriorating building since 2001, said Marsha Flowers, a ruling elder of West Park who was been a member of the congregation for 30 years.

In 2010, as the church was on the cusp of a deal to build housing on the site, preservationists successfully got the building designated as a city landmark. Landmarks are strictly regulated and typically prevent owners from making major and even minor changes that alter the appearance of their buildings.

Mr. Leaf said conditions in the building kept getting worse. Estimates for how much it would cost in total to renovate it are around $50 million, including $14 million to deal with crumbling facades and $4 million to comply with building and fire code violations.

Last June, the church presented a new application to the Landmarks Preservation Commission, essentially saying the deteriorating building and its landmark status presented a hardship to the church, which has no money to keep it up. They asked the commission to allow it to be redeveloped.

But the commission has only granted such applications 13 times since it was established in the 1960s, suggesting the odds are in the preservationists’ favor.

Nevertheless, Mr. Leaf is optimistic. He said if the application was granted, a developer, Alchemy Partners, has already signed a contract that would pay the church more than $30 million to demolish the building and build luxury apartments there.

“That would fund food pantries, soup kitchens, warming centers, early childhood education centers, homeless shelters and so forth,” he said.

Alchemy would also pay the church $8 million to set up a new space in the building.

Preservationists dispute many of the church’s characterizations of its predicament, saying it is exaggerating the dollar figures needed. Aligned with them is a nonprofit organization called the Center at West Park, a tenant that holds art performances and other events in the church.

(The West Park congregation itself went virtual during the pandemic; another congregation, the Lighthouse Chapel, holds services there weekly.)

Some even accuse the church of intentionally letting the building fall into disrepair.

“If the commission were to grant this application, it would provide a road map to every owner of a landmarked property in the City of New York of how to get your building destroyed,” said Michael Hiller, a lawyer representing the center.

Mr. Ruffalo said in an interview that the neighborhood had “breathed a sigh of relief” when the church was designated as a landmark.

He said he regularly attends events there and had been considering organizing an event of his own when, a few weeks ago, he found out about the church’s application.

“This is what I do, man,” he said. “I use my platform to speak for people who are being abused by a system that has kept them out, that doesn’t give them a voice and that we never get to hear from.”

He said he enlisted other friends and celebrities, and he rejected the notion that the situation was an example of wealthy New Yorkers using their clout.

Mr. Ruffalo and others are mounting their own campaign to raise money for the building. One crowdsourced fund-raiser has raised about $16,000 toward their $250,0000 target — including a $1,000 donation from Mr. Ruffalo.

“Without spaces like that, I would have never made it as an actor,” Mr. Ruffalo said. “Without these places, there is no theater in New York City.”

Debby Hirshman, who became executive director of the center this spring, said anonymous donors are willing to pay for necessary repairs to eliminate the hardship — even up to $50 million. The church, however, said it has received no detailed information about such a proposal.

It’s not clear what will happen next with the church’s application, or when the commission might make a decision.