Evangelical Church Seeks To Build 10-Story UES Ministry Center

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — An Evangelical Christian church has purchased a century-old Upper East Side apartment building, with plans to demolish it to make way for a new 10-story ministry center.

Redeemer Presbyterian Church paid $29.5 million to buy the building at 150 East 91st St. from seller GPG Properties, according to real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield, who represented GPG. The sale closed on Friday, as first reported by the Commercial Observer.

By next summer, Redeemer plans to demolish the 25-unit building, which was built in 1910, and hopes to break ground on the new construction by late 2021, according to a video on the church's website.

All of the building's tenants vacated their apartments over the course of about a year leading up to the sale, Jason Glick, a managing partner at GPG, told Patch. Some tenants were relocated to other GPG properties, while others moved to other locations, Glick said.

While a design for the new building has not been finalized, current plans call for a nearly 150-foot high, 10-story structure, featuring a sanctuary seating up to 600 people, a 300-person fellowship hall and up to 17 classrooms, church elder James Herring told parishioners in the video message.

Redeemer hopes to have the building completed by early 2023.

Ambitious expansion

Redeemer has roots on the Upper East Side, first holding services in 1989 in a Seventh-Day Adventist congregation on 87th Street, according to the church's website.

Led by Pastor Timothy Keller, it has since grown to more than 5,000 members across five Manhattan locations by catering largely to working professionals, according to a 2017 profile of the church. Keller retired in 2017.

Redeemer is in the middle of an aggressive expansion campaign, aiming to raise $80 million by 2026 to help construct dozens of new churches around the city. Its long-term goal is to grow New York's Evangelical population to 15 percent of the city, up from about 5 percent.

Its expansions have stoked controversy on at least one occasion, on the Upper West Side, where residents alleged in 2011 that that the church misled them about the size of its new West 83rd Street location, in which a four-story parking garage was set to be converted into a roughly 10-story church building. Two ironworkers on the project were also killed in February 2011 after falling down an elevator shaft.

Redeemer eventually downsized the building after failing a city audit.

“Redeemer looks forward to having not only a local presence on the Upper East Side that will allow us to better serve our congregants but also a community and cultural space that contributes to the flourishing of our neighbors,” Rev. Dr. Abe Cho, senior pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church East Side, said in a news release.

Today at @RedeemerES we announced the location of the property we've closed on on the UES!!! A huge blessing to celebrate! Join us at 5pm to hear more! Pray for us as we seek to engage and love our new neighbors well, even before we move in!https://t.co/BueukEtOiT
— Abraham Cho (@abrahamcho) August 16, 2020