A fight over a historic Upper West Side church that has pitted A-list celebrities against a small Presbyterian congregation could finally be resolved next month.

On one side of the debate over West Park Presbyterian are actors like Mark Ruffalo, Scarlett Johansson and Matt Dillon, along with preservation-minded neighbors who say the space should be maintained as a performing arts venue. On the other is the small congregation that says the 135-year-old church’s upkeep is sucking up money that it would rather be using for community work. It wants to sell to a luxury developer in a deal worth $50 million.

That deal hinges on a Dec. 9 meeting where the Landmarks Preservation Commission will consider whether to take the rare step of stripping the church of its landmark status, paving the way for the sale.

“It would be a shame to demolish this landmark building which is an important structure to the Upper West Side,” Academy Award-nominated actor and local resident Matt Dillon said at a community board meeting last month.

Roger Leaf, the chair of a commission set up by the church to handle the sale, said Hollywood celebs and others do not appreciate the decades-long history leading up to this moment, which has seen the congregation’s ranks dwindle to fewer than 12 members and left it unable to afford a pastor.

Leaf says the congregation owes $200,000 for loans tied to maintaining the building, and cannot afford to take on more debt. Basic renovations to the church would cost $9 million, according to an estimate by an independent expert hired by the landmarks commission.

Julianna Margulies, Laurence Fishburne, Kenneth Lonergan and Mark Ruffalo at a March rally for West Park.

Lev Radin/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images

The celebrities have been wrangled by Debby Hirshman, the leader of an arts nonprofit that grew out of the church. The relationship between the church and the organization soured, and the organization was evicted from the space earlier this year.

“[Hirshman] was really effective at recruiting celebrities to speak for the church. I don’t know that she ever fully explained the situation to them,” Leaf said.

Hirshman, a prominent Upper West Sider, said that the celebrities are invested in the project for the right reasons.

“Scarlett Johansson and J. Smith-Cameron and Alec Baldwin, they’re all doing this out of the same values of social justice [that the church has].” she said.

A crumbling church

The church began grappling with its future when chunks of the building started falling onto West 86th Street in the early 2000s.

The West Park congregation found that it was spending more and more of its funds on building maintenance and less on the social justice efforts that made up its identity. Marsha Flowers, who has been a member of the congregation for decades, said she and her fellow parishioners cared for people suffering from AIDS, joined anti-wage theft protests and started the  West Side Federation for Senior and Supportive Housing.

Many of the worshipers weren’t overly sentimental about the church itself, and saw the real estate transaction as a way to fund ministry work.

“ The church is not a building. The church is not a steeple. The church is not a resting place. The church is a people,” said the Rev. Chris Shelton, singing a tune that captured parishioners’ feelings.

Shelton, who worked as an intern at West Park in 2001, is now the pastor of Broadway Presbyterian Church on 111th Street.

Rev. Chris Shelton said parishioners did not have a sentimental attachment to the church itself.

Hayden Betts

In 2010, the congregation proposed replacing an annex to the church with a tower containing affordable housing while maintaining the sanctuary. But Councilmember Gale Brewer led a successful fight to block the development by designating the church a landmark.

The Landmarks Preservation Commission wrote that the church “is considered to be one of the best examples of a Romanesque Revival-style religious structure in New York City.”

At the time, Brewer promised to find the congregation money to restore the building so it would not have to spend all its resources on the project.

That money never arrived. At a public meeting this October, Brewer apologized for failing to get the money. She vowed to continue trying to secure the funds.

The landmark designation has handcuffed the congregation, Leaf said, leaving it stuck maintaining a property with few parishioners.

“The landmarking itself has really taken an enormous amount of value away from the church,” Leaf said.

A preservation fight with star power

In 2018, the church’s leadership set up an arts nonprofit to help fund renovations to the church. The nonprofit paid less than $3,000 in monthly rent for use of the whole church, according to court papers.

Roger Leaf, who heads a commission tasked with selling the church, said celebrities had been a powerful force in the preservation fight.

Hayden Betts

But as the arts scene grew through performances and exhibitions in the space branded as The Center at West Park, the nonprofit’s relationship with the church deteriorated.

Both sides became locked in a bitter dispute over whether the arts organization was meeting its obligation to help renovate the church. The arts group countered that church leaders were letting the church deteriorate to increase the likelihood of a sale.

“People use the word demolition by neglect,” Hirshman said.

In 2022, the church moved to evict the arts group and sell the property. That’s when the celebrities entered the fray.

The first to get involved was Ruffalo, who visited West Park when he was looking to rent a sculpting studio around March 2023.

“ He walks into the sanctuary… And he said to me. Debby, we can’t let this be demolished,” Hirshman recalled.

A dilapidated corner of West Park, where rags soak up leaks through the walls.

Hayden Betts

Ruffalo enlisted friends like playwright Kenny Lonergan. Wendell Pierce, Amy Schumer, and Matt Damon soon followed. Celebs held a staged reading in the Hamptons to raise money for the preservation effort. Tickets cost $1,000 a head, with money going to the nonprofit.

But for all the attention they’ve generated, the church’s celebrity backers will not factor directly in the upcoming hearing. Rather, the landmarks commission will determine whether the church is too much of a burden to maintain.

Leaf said the church would use money from the sale to launch a social justice fund that would award $900,000 each year “in perpetuity” to groups providing community services like immigration assistance and free food for the needy.

But the odds may not be in the church’s favor. The commission has only stripped 13 properties of landmark status in the last 57 years.

“ I don’t have much faith to tell you the truth, in us getting a fair hearing. We don’t have celebrities who have never set foot in that church [on our side],” said Flowers.