NEW YORK — Buried by falling
rubble from the World Trade Center towers after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, all
that remained of the tiny St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church were some candles,
two icons and a bell clapper.
These salvaged artifacts are
being kept at the headquarters of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America
while the church’s 70 member families worship at a cathedral in Brooklyn,
praying for the day they can return to a new sanctuary in lower Manhattan.
“Everything has been
incredibly slow and incredibly frustrating, but until the spring of 2009,
everything at Ground Zero was going slowly, not just us,” said John
Couloucoundis, the president of the St. Nicholas parish council. “It was a slow
faucet, but at least the faucet was dripping. But then, last year, they just
turned it off.”
Construction has begun on
the 9/11 memorial and several of the major buildings planned for the 16-acre
site, with estimated completion dates between 2011 and 2014. Little St.
Nicholas, however, remains in limbo.
Negotiations with the Port
Authority of New York and New Jersey for a land swap and public funding reached
an impasse more than a year ago.
The stalemate is only now
generating public attention due to heated protests over Park51, a proposed
Islamic community center several blocks away that’s been dubbed the “Ground
Zero mosque” by critics.
“St. Nicholas has nothing to
do with this mosque controversy. We believe in religious freedom, and whether
the mosque should or shouldn’t be there, that’s a whole different dialogue,”
said Mark Arey, archdiocese spokesman.
“But it’s a rising tide that
lifts all boats. People say the mosque has been greenlighted, but why not this
church?”
The entire Ground Zero
rebuilding process has taken years longer than expected, due to the arduous rescue,
recovery and rubble-removal efforts, followed by the bureaucratic process of
establishing property ownership and designing the memorial and buildings.
By late 2008, St. Nicholas
and the Port Authority had reached a tentative agreement for the church to give
up its 1,200-square-foot site at 155 Cedar Street in exchange for 130 Liberty
Street, a bigger site half a block away.
Six months later, the Port
Authority said negotiations ended because St. Nicholas demanded too much money
and approval power over a vehicle security center beneath the sites. Port
Authority spokesman Stephen Sigmund said the church can return to its original
location.
“In 2009, we made our final
offer, which again included up to $60 million in public money, and told St.
Nicholas Orthodox Church that the World Trade Center could not be delayed over
this issue,” he said in a written statement. “They rejected that offer.”
Arey said negotiations were
in the final stages, with the church “acting in good faith,” when the Port
Authority suddenly stopped returning calls. He and other church officials think
the agency changed course because the fate of the old Deutsch Bank building
next to the new site — which is supposed to become Tower 5 of the rebuilt World
Trade Center — became unclear after JP Morgan Chase took over Bear Stearns’ midtown
offices and no longer needed a new building downtown.
“Maybe they wanted to figure
out what else to do with that property,” Couloucoundis said. “The official
account is that the church was too demanding. That’s completely ridiculous. We
weren’t suddenly asking for $100 million or to build a church 30 stories high.”
The Deutsch Bank building is
still partly standing at Liberty Street; a 2007 blaze that killed two
firefighters there stalled the demolition, and the Port Authority has not
released new plans for what will replace it.
The church is holding firm
to the Liberty Street swap plan, and says its old site is unacceptable — it’s
too close to the proposed vehicle security center’s garage doors, and St. Nicholas
needs more space for the visitors to the 9/11 memorial and thousands of new
residents in the neighborhood.
The new 130 Liberty Street
site could accommodate a church six times bigger than the old one, which was
open only twice a week and didn’t offer any children’s programs.
A three- or four-story
building that meets the city’s Ground Zero security requirements will cost at
least $30 million, Couloucoundis said. The church has raised about $4 million
so far, with donations coming in from around the world. Concerns about sloppy
book-keeping has prompted the archdiocese to step in to help oversee the funds,
he added, and a forensic accountant will be hired to go over the bookkeeping.
“In the end, it’s not about
the money,” Arey said. “There are people all over the world who want to see
this church rebuilt. This church will be rebuilt.”