‘A blogged week’ turned into a very blogged few hours yesterday, thanks to the Daily News and the people over at Curbed who gave some much needed exposure to Pastor Robert Emerick’s desperate counter-protest to local activists’ 11th hour effort to stop the sale/demolition of his Bay Ridge United Methodist ‘Green’ Church.

Efforts which have been stoked with all the thoughtfulness, sensitivity and mercy of a California wildfire. Largely, by the hysterical and dishonest objections of groups such as Katherine Walker’s ‘Committee to Save the Green Church,’ local activist Victoria Hofmo of the Bay Ridge Community Council’s Preservation Committee, councilman Gentile, and Assemblywoman Hyer-Spencer.

[photo courtesy of NY Daily News]

Hofmo, best known for her passionate, highly romanticized exhortations, put on her best ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf’ game-face this week as she kicked off her BRCC chair[person]ship with a preservation ‘awareness’ retrospective. Which, at one point, reportedly spiraled into a bizarre cross-fire between congregation supporters, preservationists and audience members.

Emerick, who leads the congregation of less than two dozen worshipers, is asking officials and activists to stop intervening in their sale and allow them to ‘bury their dead in peace.’

Repeated landmarking attempts have failed, resoundingly.

Last year Gentile, ‘Save The Green Church’s’ Katherine Walker, along with Hofmo [all of whom have been behind more lost causes, it's amazing they aren't managing the Knicks] approached the Landmarks Commission, but were unsuccessful.

“’They ignored just about everything we said,’ complained one person who attended a session with Tierney” – reported the Brooklyn Eagle.

Local preservationists, already having proven their inability to score an administrative victory, continue to desperately enlist an army of supporters by waging a tasteless war of merciless jawboning, brow-beating and intellectual half-truths that paint the congregation as ‘liars,’ who are somehow ‘indebted’ to the community.

Of course for one to believe the case of local preservationists, one would therefor have to accept those claims – while on the other hand – the congregation has satisfied every administrative and legal requisite to the liking of the Brooklyn Supreme Court, who’ve already allowed them to proceed as they wish with the sale.

“We can not let them take this from us… This is our community, this is our church, and this is
our fight, now is the time to make our voices heard,” said historian Wade Goria at a CB10 meeting last year.

Goria’s emotionally charged remarks [for which he had to be physically restrained at one point], are naturally echoed by other preservationists and will hopefully serve as a reminder as to just how the community of Bay Ridge failed the Green Church, not the other way around.

And, when these particular walls finally do come tumbling down, you can hopefully count among the destroyed this particular crop of “neighborhood” preservationists – born of this tragedy.

Because if the best Bay Ridge can do to preserve its historical signifigance, is save its structures by destroying the dignity of our neighbors – is anything ultimately worth saving at that price?

a blogged week, redux: preservation & zoning
Bay Ridge Rover: a blogged week(11/1/07), pro-growth Bay Ridge in the age of enlightenment,
activism or fascism (10/24/07)
Right in Bay Ridge: a new front opens over Bay Ridge’s Green Church (1/18)
Gowanus Lounge: Amity street developers rethink plans, Reaction to Carroll Gardens down-zone is muted
Curbed: Will God take sides in nasty Bay Ridge church demo fight?
GothamCityInsider: they paved paradise and put up a 3br, 2 & 1/2 bath Fedders
Brownstoner: Time Equities Planner weighs in on Amity plan, CG Downzone Dance Begins
PardonMeforAsking: a look inside 45, 3rd place

a preservation-neutral blogged week:
Right in Bay Ridge: meter maids continue to harass Bay Ridge residents outside their homes
Sunset Park Blog: Will Sunset Ferry Ever Return? Ron Ardito RIP, Dumplings in Sunset Park
GothamCityInsider:Pit needs TLC, Evolution of the Guido, “milestones”
Gowanus Lounge: the latest on 475 Kent, something smells on Grand street, Red Hook Taco Wars
PardonMeForAsking: still trying to figure out who Councilman Bill De Blasio is working for