By Jamie Hook
Jamie Hook is a filmmaker, writer, and community engineer. He writes about development and other community issues in a variety of local papers and lives above Peter Pan Donuts in Downtown Greenpoint.Â
It may not be the old Penn Station, but it will still hurt to see McGolrick Park’s Park Church torn down and replaced with condominiums—a process which was all-but-inevitably set in motion by the controversial sale of the 100 year…
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Greenpointers has covered Greenpoint & Williamsburg since 2007 — community boards, rezoning fights, local businesses, and the people whose lives and work give the neighborhood its character. Local news is collapsing across the country, but we're still here: independently owned, no corporate backing, no paywall. 18+ years, 280k+ monthly readers and followers, funded by the community we serve.
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Tearing this church down is a criminal. If the only solution for developers to recoup their funds is to rehab the church, it should stay as it is – as has happened in Williamsburg where churches, sadly, have become condos but retained their exterior. Central Greenpoint is not the place for contemporary architecture. As much as any of us might like or respect the clean look of the modern, this is an historic neighborhood. If there is a way of turning the church into a community center, an arts center, a performance space, an exhibition space, and/or a gallery while maintaining the architectural integrity of the McGolrick Park landscape, we do hope that the community will rise to the occasion. Absolutely count us in.
Money always wins . My neighbors on Apollo st initially tried to stop the new homeless shelter there . They don’t understand that the astronomical $ changing hands guarantees it’s completion as does the church’s demise and co-op erecting .