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Park Slope church condos on the way

By Dana Rubinstein
The Brooklyn Paper
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The Brooklyn Paper / Jeff Bachner
Work at the lot next to the Gethsemane Church has begun.

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New details have finally emerged about a condominium project being built on a former churchyard that sparked a debate between a Park Slope reverend and neighbors who fought to preserve a greenspace that didn’t belong to them.

The developers who purchased land adjacent to Gethsemane Church in September are making progress on their 10-unit condominium building, designed by a local architectural firm.

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John O’Reilly, a managing member of the fund, told The Brooklyn Paper that each of the 10 units in the five-story building would range between 1,250 and 2,500 square feet, and most of them would be three-bedroom “family” condos. Two will be “condo townhouses,” while another two will be penthouse apartments with “spectacular views of the city and Prospect Park.” All of the units will share rooftop space.

“We could build 20 units there, but we felt it was a family part of the neighborhood, so we wanted to build family units there,” said O’Reilly. “It will be a lovely project [with] very high-end units equivalent to whatever is the best in the neighborhood.”

News that Gethsemane Church, on Eighth Avenue between Ninth and 10th streets, would sell its weed-choked backyard to raise money for the struggling Presbyterian church sparked an outcry last summer, with complaints about the loss of green space — even though the churchyard sits a block from Prospect Park.

At the time, Rev. Liz Alexander said that she could either sell the lot or close the church, or sell the church and the lot, which would, presumably, lead to an ever larger development.

Alexander’s church, surrounded by Brooklyn’s landed gentry, caters to relatives of the imprisoned, and to former convicts and their families.

©2008 The Brooklyn Paper

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