Recommended Path
Our position is straightforward: we are urging the church to reconsider this plan entirely. The community, and WVCP broadly, supports rebuilding the modest social hall that was lost in the 1982 fire. We also recognize that the block’s existing open-space arrangement only tenuously works as it is.
Constructing the proposed Mission Building within the interior of the block, on what is now playground and open space, would intensify an already fragile zoning condition and push the block’s open-space framework further beyond what the Zoning Resolution appears to permit. Just as important, this proposal raises serious concerns about safety, enforceability, and long-term institutional control. The church has offered aspirations about future programming and management, but no binding guarantees that would protect the surrounding community over time. There are no meaningful assurances about the nature of future programming, the scale of outside use, the operational impacts on nearby residents, or how safety concerns would be addressed if the building’s use evolves. Once this structure is built, those risks become permanent, while the neighborhood bears the consequences.
More fundamentally, this proposal would transfer lasting control over the heart of an organically developed neighborhood block from open, informal, community-scaled space to a single institutional use. That is not a minor site adjustment. It is a permanent change in the character, balance, and lived experience of the West Village. What now functions as open interior space would become a vehicle for future institutional programming with no reliable guarantee that the uses, intensity, or impacts will remain consistent with what is being suggested today.
WVCP stands with the more than 2,300 residents who have signed petitions and personally voiced concerns at Community Board meetings. Those concerns are not abstract. They go to the long-term safety, stewardship, and character of the neighborhood, and to whether this block will remain governed by the delicate balance that has evolved over time or be permanently reshaped by a use that offers the community no durable protections. With so much unresolved, we are compelled to act.
If the church proceeds with this plan, our group will pursue a formal zoning challenge with the New York City Department of Buildings. Such a review could extend beyond the proposed building itself and examine the broader zoning framework governing the block. A formal zoning challenge would likely result in months of delay while city agencies review both the proposal and the underlying zoning framework. During that period, construction would not proceed, and the resulting uncertainty could affect the church’s ability to move forward with future projects on the block, including any eventual replacement of the social hall as a separate matter.
By contrast, if the Mission Building proposal is withdrawn and the current open-space configuration is preserved as it exists today, even acknowledging its imperfections, WVCP sees no reason to pursue a zoning challenge, including with respect to an application for the modest replacement social hall.