By Tara Kyle and Lexi Matsui

From its rooftop to the sidewalk along Park Avenue and 60th Street, Christ Church United Methodist sits on some of the most rarefied real estate in Manhattan.  But when congregants gaze upward, their path to the heavens will be interrupted by air that no longer belongs to the church.

Just over a month ago, church leaders signed a record-setting deal to sell the property’s air rights to developers William and Arthur Zeckendorf, said Gary Dunning, chairman of the church’s board of trustees. In a December 2005 agreement, the Zeckendorf brothers agreed to pay $430 per square foot for the air rights, which was more than double the going rate for commercial air space in Manhattan.

Although the city boasts hundreds of cathedrals, churches, temples and mosques, the landscape of Manhattan has traditionally been identified by its iconic skyscrapers.

“We’re dwarfed by everything anyway,” said Christ Church Reverend Stephen Bauman.

The fact that the $30 million the church stands to make off the sale will allow it to further serve as a “vital contributor to the community” outweighs the value of any symbolism lost, Bauman said.

While the deal does not allow the Zeckendorfs to build atop Christ Church, it does allow them to increase the vertical limit of their property two doors down.

“When you buy a property, you buy whatever’s below you and whatever’s above you,” said Owen Stone, press secretary for the New York City Department of Finance.

Air rights in Manhattan can only be sold to adjacent properties. Consequently, the Zeckendorfs also had to buy air rights from the Grolier Club, which sits between their property and the church.

Christ Church Reverend Stephen Bauman

“What we were
hanging on to was an unrealized asset ... it’s like having a great masterpiece that is
not useful unless
applied in a different way."

*Grolier Club
*Christ Church
*New York City Dept. of Planning
*New York City Zoning Handbook

In selling off air rights, a property owner gives up the legal ability to build up.

On reflection, the sale is one Bauman said he and his congregation do not regret. 

Over the years, developers had come calling at Christ Church with such offers  as buying the church and building a hallway passing through the Parish Hall.

Developers also made offers to the Grolier Club.

For Christ Church, the Zeckendorfs’ proposal, stood out because of its less intrusive aims.

The church’s need to protect its financial future and interest in growing its social services outweighed concerns about the aesthetic and symbolic loss of air space for most parishioners.

Of those who initially objected, Dunning said, many misunderstood the concept of air rights.

“The big fear was that we would have a skyscraper on top of the building,” said Dunning.

Few parishioners held on to strong objections once misconceptions were cleared. At a town-hall style meeting in December of 2005, attendees voted 127 to 3 in favor of the sale. 

The remaining opponents didn’t want “to participate in making any developer rich,” Dunning said.

With the $30 million Zeckendorf is due to pay in full by the closing date of December 2009, Bauman and Dunning said Christ Church intends to refurbish the property, cushion the endowment and dramatically expand its outreach programming.

“What we were hanging on to was an unrealized asset,” Bauman said. “It’s like having a great masterpiece that is not useful unless applied in a different way.”

In the past, Christ Church has built a library and refurbished the gym of a school in the South Bronx and sent teams of volunteers to aid work in Biloxi, Miss., and Ghana in West Africa.  Through their new capital campaign, finances  in part by the Zeckendorf’s $30 million, Bauman believes his congregation can accomplish much more.

Both New York State law and the policy of the United Methodist Church forbid the selling of air rights in order to pay an operating budget – the fear being that owners would sell in order to dig themselves out of debt.

At the neighboring Grolier Club, which as part of the same deal sold its air rights to the Zeckendorfs for $7 million, the money is currently sitting in an escrow account, President William Helfand said.