News
Wire Story

Sky’s the Limit

Air above urban churches is hot property.

A crunch on open space in many rejuvenated cities has developers courting churches with multimillion-dollar offers to buy the air above them.

“In an urban area, air rights are just as much an asset as a piece of property,” said the Rev. John Buchanan, pastor of Fourth Presbyterian on Michigan Avenue in Chicago. The church is working on a deal that could bring in $25 million.

From New York to Seattle, downtown congregations are striking deals worth tens of millions of dollars. Those willing to sell are often mainline Protestant churches saddled with aging buildings, growing deficits, and shrinking memberships.

A church that doesn’t reach the maximum height allowed by zoning laws can sell the unused space to a developer, who can transfer that space to an adjacent building, and thus add stories to it. Churches can make millions off a “vertical asset” that would otherwise go unused.

On Manhattan’s tony Park Avenue, the Byzantine-style Christ Church United Methodist is dwarfed by high-rise apartment buildings on the corner of East 60th Street. Christ Church negotiated a selling price of $430 a square foot-twice the going rate in New York’s cutthroat real-estate market-for their 70,000 square feet of unused vertical space. The November deal generated $30 million for the church.

The church’s pastor, the Rev. Stephen Bauman, said the money will fund ministry programs, including a public school in the South Bronx that has been “adopted” by the church.

The members of West-Park Presbyterian Church on New York’s Upper West Side were offered $40 million for their crumbling building on Amsterdam Avenue, but decided to sell air rights for about $15 million. The money will fund repairs to the church.

“We wanted something more creative than finding a developer and selling [the building] to the highest bidder” and walking away, said West-Park’s pastor, the Rev. Bob Brashear.

Copyright © 2006 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Related Elsewhere:

The United Methodist New Service has a story on Christ Church’s sale of its air rights.

An article in Real Deal, a publication on New York real estate, discusses air rights in the city.

Chicago’s Fourth Presbyterian has information about its arrangement to sell air rights.

Also in this issue

The CT archives are a rich treasure of biblical wisdom and insight from our past. Some things we would say differently today, and some stances we've changed. But overall, we're amazed at how relevant so much of this content is. We trust that you'll find it a helpful resource.

Cover Story

Hope in the Heart of Darkness

Do It for the Children

The Lure of Theocracy

Second-half Calling

Q+A: Michael Cromartie

Free Speech Fiasco

More than Logic

Pro-life Feminists

Cutting Deeper

Grand Illusions

Latter-day Complaints

Friday Night Fish Fry

Beyond Azusa Street

Lost Missions

What's Right About Patriotism

Hide Your Bible

Crowded Out

Belgrade Curve

Health Care, Everyone?

From Rape to Rebuilding

News

Passages

Excerpt

'Jesus Mean and Wild: The Unexpected Love of an Untamable God'

The Faith of Our Founders

Social Justice Surprise

Experiencing Life at the Margins

Born Again and Again

News

Go Figure

Gospel Work in Time of War

Glimpses of God in Africa

News

Quotation Marks

Summer

Editorial

Beyond Yellow Ribbons

Editorial

Sex Isn't a Spectator Sport

Reforming Wayward Reformers

View issue

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