At Last, Bay Ridge's 'Green Church' Will Be Rebuilt

A long dormant church redevelopment project is coming back to life in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. Seven years after it was demolished, The United Methodist Church in the neighborhood, which was nicknamed The Green Church due to the color of the stone used on its facade, is now being rebuilt with a focus on environmentally-conscious construction, the Brooklyn Daily reports.

Construction workers broke ground on the project sometime in early November. The site will now encompass a smaller church and space to build a school - P.S. 331 to be precise.

There's a long embattled history to the site and it goes like this: Church officials successfully petitioned the National Parks Foundation to list the building on its National Register of Historic Places back in 1999. Less than a decade later, the congregation was ready to sell the land and the 109-year-old church because it was too expensive to maintain the building. That caused a tussle between locals who wanted to preserve the building, and church officials who were ready to move on. Developer Abe Betesh purchased the property in 2008 to convert it to condos along with a smaller church next to the residential building. He even went ahead and demolished the old church building, but sold it to the city the following year for $10 million, presumably following the burst of the housing bubble. Local representatives like City Councilman Vincent Gentile proposed the construction of a school and the city agreed.

The church is currently in operating from the premises of its neighbor, The Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd, according to its website.