Call it fervor for religious conversions.
Developers, constantly on the hunt for underutilized land, have been zeroing in on houses of worship, betting that with congregation sizes shrinking, some churches may be more inclined to sell property today than when the trend began a decade ago.
In a sense, the builders may be on to something. Only 30% of U.S. adults attend religious services regularly, a 12% drop in two decades, and it comes as those citing no religious affiliation jumped to 21% from 9% over the same span, according to Gallup polling from last year.
At the same time, the Catholic Church is on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars to settle sex-abuse claims, a factor that may help explain the ongoing sales of longtime church sites across the city. Though some corners of the country may be adding megachurches, New York seems to be shedding pews and pulpits, developers, brokers and architects say.
Not all church-to-housing conversion efforts have panned out. Alchemy Ventures’ attempt to raze the 19th-century Upper West Side structure containing West-Park Presbyterian and replace it with a luxury housing and sanctuary complex appears paused after pushback from preservation-focused neighbors.
June’s planned closure of Washington Heights’ Fort Washington Collegiate Church has touched off similar opposition.
And approaches may be shifting. Initially developers formed joint ventures with church leaders that promised to deliver a new facility in exchange for allowing the construction of luxury apartments on the above floors.
But some of those partnerships eventually crumbled, especially in church-heavy Harlem, where some parishioners sued developers after new buildings went undelivered. In other cases, apparently-unscrupulous pastors cut side deals that drained already-depleted coffers.
But despite the controversies, churches and similar structures should expect more knocks on their doors from developers amid an official push to add housing that is allowing apartments in places where they were historically limited. And faith-based organizations account for a lot of land, about 92 million square feet, or two and a half times the size of Central Park, based on a 2024 study by NYU’s Furman Center.
“I expect to see more conversions going forward as churches close,” said Michael Levy, founder and principal of Geneva Transatlantic Holdings, which is redeveloping a Clinton Hill property as a housing complex. “It’s the nature of things. Development happens in cycles.”
Here are some of the latest developments, demolitions and deals targeting once-sacred ground.
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256 E. Fourth St., East Village, Manhattan
For much of the 20th century, the 4-story midblock structure at this address was home to the Lemberger Synagogue, which in 1972 gave way to Iglesia Evangelica Bautista, a Spanish Baptist church that served the neighborhood’s once-dominant Puerto Rican community. Today the property between Avenues B and C is on its way to becoming a 6-story, six-unit multifamily dwelling, based on Department of Buildings permits approved in April. Ariel Sholomov bought the property in November for $2.9 million from church trustee Efrain Ramos, based on the city register, though Rotem Cohen is the named developer on the permits. In early May demolitions were underway at the site, whose neo-Gothic facade could reportedly not be saved because of damage. The new structure will have a brick, flower-box-lined front wall, as per a rendering. An effort to contact Sholomov and Cohen was unsuccessful by press time.
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257 Washington Ave., Clinton Hill, Brooklyn
For years developers have eyed the former St. Luke’s Evangelical Lutheran Church, a set-back, block-through landmark by Pratt Institute, but little has come of it. Indeed, in 2018 Brookland Capital planned eight homes on the 16,000-square-foot church-and-parish-house site but unloaded the property a year later amid debt problems. Next up, Serabjit Singh Malhotra aimed for seven units but later defaulted on multiple loans and lost the church to foreclosure. The team of Geneva Transatlantic Holdings and Orange Management picked up the site for $9 million and plans to construct four townhouses in the parish house, which faces Hall Street, and up to 12 apartments in the church. The breakdown depends on what’s allowed by the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission, which received the developers’ application in mid-May. Its designer is Combined Architecture, which handled an ecclesiastical revamp at Fort Greene’s 232 Adelphi St. Geneva founder Michael Levy says he’s grateful the congregation has been gone since 2014 because joint ventures in which the church has a presence on the property can be tough. “What about if there is a birthday party in the building at the same time that people want to pray?” he said. “It just doesn’t work.”
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341 W. 25th St., Chelsea, Manhattan
The Archdiocese of New York has closed buildings left and right as it faces dozens of sex abuse lawsuits; it’s even vacating its longtime headquarters on First Avenue in Midtown, where developer Vanbarton Group is seeking to install 420 apartments. But dwindling congregations—weekly church attendance among Catholics has plummeted to 33% from 45% in two decades, Gallup says—have forced parishes to merge and made some buildings obsolete. Among the church sites to be divested is St. Columba’s four-building campus between Eighth and Ninth avenues, which Timber Equities, a developer known for multifamily projects in Upper Manhattan, is in contract to purchase for $48.3 million, court filings show. The deal has not yet closed, though, and Timber has not yet applied for any building permits. Squeezed between hulking Penn South housing towers but enjoying 200 feet of frontage, No. 341 could add as much as a 128,000-square-foot development, according to site marketer JLL. Phone and email messages for Timber partner Jeff Torkin went unreturned by press time.
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342 W. 53rd St., Hell’s Kitchen, Manhattan
A hybrid model is a popular strategy in conversions. The work underway at this church-and-rectory, two-parcel project, for instance, seems to call for keeping the prewar structure as a church while adding a multifamily residence at next-door No. 340, though some details are still unclear. Reached by phone, Shirley Wang, an executive with Los Angeles-based JMM Charitable Foundation, which paid a combined $16 million for the pair of properties in 2023, declined to comment. But the Department of Buildings in February approved a partial demolition of No. 340 to clear the way for a 7-story, 10-unit building encompassing 21,600 square feet, filings show. And a rendering from Kutnicki Bernstein Architects shows a glassy, white-toned midrise next to the revitalized church, which was formerly St. Benedict the Moor and the first Black Catholic congregation north of the Mason-Dixon line. The rendering suggests Presbyterians will be its users next. Plywood replaced stained-glass windows in the past year. Wang, the CEO of door-maker Plastpro, and her husband, Walter Wang, CEO of pipe-maker JM Eagle, are multibillionaires and global philanthropists.
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783 Fourth Ave., Greenwood Heights, Brooklyn
One of the most prolific church converters might be Wolfe Landau and David Tabak’s Watermark Capital Group, which snapped up about a half-dozen Brooklyn sites in recent years. Among them are properties at 433 Sackett St. in Carroll Gardens; 285 and 295 Willoughby Ave. in Bedford-Stuyvesant; and 144 St. Felix St. in Fort Greene, though that investment led to a suit by co-investors alleging Landau sidelined his partners and negotiated side deals behind their back. Watermark has also apparently partnered with the Brooklyn Archdiocese in a plan to construct more than 200 units at the sweeping former campus of Roman Catholic St. Rocco’s off Fourth Avenue in Greenwood Heights, though a zoning change is required. In a way, Watermark is an old hand at the game. About a decade ago, it leased land at 321 Wythe Ave. in Williamsburg belonging to the Sts. Peter and Paul Church before razing its low-slung building and replacing it with a 19-story, 130-unit tower that opened in 2019. An effort to reach Landau by press time was unsuccessful.
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140 W. 81st St., Upper West Side, Manhattan
Some projects need to tread tricky paths among DOB officials, who often prefer clear windows to stained-glass ones, say, and Landmarks Preservation Commission officials, who may take the opposite view. The process can play out for years, though this site, a six-unit condo conversion of the ex-Mount Pleasant Baptist Church, which is in a historic district between Columbus and Amsterdam avenues, got a green light soon after conception in 2013. Development team members changed along the way, though, delaying the project, which just began sales a few months ago. Offering elegant red-tile towers, a choir loft turned bedroom and a tapered 32-foot ceiling, the $24 million conversion, from CMC Development Group, Ekstein Development and Pinnacle Group, is also adding a two-level sanctuary and community facility for the 20-member congregation, while Mount Pleasant’s bishop will get one of the apartments. The project reflects the old way things were done. A shrinking nonprofit trades its land, air rights and run-down structure for a new and improved home. But the developers also kicked in $6.7 million, based on a 2016 deed. Because the site had to remove historic details to pencil out, historic tax credits were unavailable. The five for-sale homes are expected to fetch $43 million, according to No. 140’s offering plan. “Different churches have different geometries,” said Jordan Rogove, a partner at project architecture firm DXA Studio during a tour this month. “But I think it’s important for churched to tell us what they want to be.”
