Following consultation with The Episcopal Church’s Executive Council, which is meeting this week in the Episcopal Diocese of Puerto Rico, Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe announced that a New York-based real estate firm will begin marketing the Church Center building at 815 Second Ave. in New York City.
The church hopes to enter into a long-term ground lease with a group that would redevelop the building, potentially as affordable housing. While marketing will begin in the coming weeks, any decision about the building is likely months away, Rowe said. If the building is leased or sold to a developer, New York-based staff would relocate to new, temporary offices in Manhattan, while a process to determine a permanent location for the Church Center would take place in the coming years.
The decision to market the building comes after decades of discussion about the possibility of relocating the headquarters of The Episcopal Church, going back as far as the 1970 General Convention (see p. 275). In 2012, the General Convention approved Resolution D016, resolving to relocate Church Center headquarters away from 815 Second Ave. A ground lease of the building to a third-party developer would fulfill that mandate.
As The Episcopal Church seeks to position itself strategically for long-term missional effectiveness, leaders have looked closely at the 63-year-old building, the church’s most valuable non-endowment asset.
“We’ve done a detailed analysis about the best use of the building, with consultants and architects,” Chief Financial Officer Chris Lacovara said. “We occupy a fraction of the Church Center space now, and the conclusion is that we don’t need to own and occupy a building in midtown Manhattan.”
“Dioceses and congregations throughout The Episcopal Church are looking at real estate as a missional asset, and we need to think about the Church Center in the same way,” Lacovara said. “We’re hoping that the decision to market the building, and the process we went through leading up to it, will encourage others to think carefully about how best to steward underutilized buildings and land.”
The 12-story, 146,000-square-foot Church Center building was completed in 1963, with a formal dedication on April 29 of that year. At a construction cost of $4 million, it provided three times the area of the prior Church Missions House on Park Avenue, with office space for 500 staff and all official church bodies and cooperating agencies.
But today, many Church Center employees live in and work from locations throughout the U.S. and Europe. The Episcopal Church and affiliated organizations occupy less than half of the building and need even less space, Lacovara said.
Denham Wolf Real Estate Services in Manhattan will lead marketing of the building, focusing on the unique opportunity for real estate in midtown Manhattan, a block from the United Nations and two blocks from Grand Central Station. Denham Wolf specializes in serving nonprofit organizations and has extensive experience advising faith-based institutions, including Episcopal entities, on complex real estate transactions.