Why Matt Damon is the latest star to join the battle for the fate of a church

Good morning. It is Wednesday. Today we’ll look at how a campaign to save a church from demolition – despite church leaders wanting the building demolished – brought in actor Matt Damon for a fundraiser.

How do you get a star like Matt Damon to appear in a benefit performance of a play at an Upper West Side church?

“Ask him,” said Kenneth Lonergan, who wrote the piece in question: “This is our youth.”

Damon will appear in a performance of “This Is Our Youth” on November 16. The show is a fundraiser for the Center at West Park, which leases the West Park Presbyterian Church, on West 86th Street at Amsterdam Avenue. Tickets start at $500. The grand prize for a second performance, on November 17, is $250, and some seats have no set admission fee; those who attend can pay whatever they want.

Damon is the latest celebrity to support the center and its campaign, against the council’s wishes, to prevent the demolition of the Romanesque Revival-style church. Actors Mark Ruffalo and Wendell Pierce; the comedian Amy Schumer; and the rapper and actor Common have also become involved in the case.

Together, they are lending their bold names to an effort to raise money for the center, including to make needed repairs to the building so that the scaffolding and sidewalk shed that have long covered the property can be removed.

Debby Hirshman, executive director of the center, said the goal was to raise more than $300,000 from the “This Is Our Youth” performances. That would complement a new capital campaign aimed at raising $2 million for repairs to the building — an amount that opponents of demolition say would cover the cost of the work, as detailed in a recent report from an engineering consultant from the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission.

A church spokeswoman disputed that analysis, calling it “a band-aid solution” that would not pay for interior work needed to meet fire safety and accessibility regulations, just as an attorney for the center disputed a financial analysis done for the monuments committee.

That document stated that the building, owned by an owner other than the municipality, could not generate a reasonable return. Hirshman said she met with church officials last summer and offered to make the church “financially whole” if she would withdraw a hardship application she filed with the historic preservation commission last year.

The application was a first step towards the building’s demolition as part of a real estate deal that would give the council space in what would become a new apartment building on the site. The church — which was designated a city landmark in 2010 over the council’s objections — is likely to receive $30 million from a developer with which it signed a binding contract in 2022.

Hirshman said church leaders rejected her proposal.

The center had previously offered to buy the building; a church spokesperson said that “none of the offers were feasible or realistic given the repair costs.” The spokeswoman also questioned the center’s “continued inability to raise sufficient funds” to pay for the repairs.

The monument committee has not scheduled a vote on the church’s application.

As for Damon’s appearances in “This Is Our Youth” next week, Lonergan turned to him because Josh Hamilton, who had appeared in the original Off Broadway production, was unavailable. The rest of the cast was already known: Ruffalo, reprising his breakthrough role from 1996, and Missy Yager, along with director Mark Brokaw. Ruffalo became involved with the center last year and even confronted Mayor Eric Adams at the Tribeca Film Festival to advocate for saving the building.

It helped that Damon and Lonergan knew each other, and that Damon knew the play: he appeared in a London production of it for two months in 2002.

“I explained the situation to him and immediately he said, ‘I’m in,’ which is what I thought he would say if he was available,” Lonergan said, “and in fact he had an apartment a block away. maybe a year or two away from church. This goes a long way back.” He said Damon wanted to “keep what was special about the neighborhood special.”

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The latest New York news

Democrats held on to a Brooklyn city council seat that showed signs of drifting. Justin Brannan, a Democrat who is the council’s powerful finance chairman, defeated his Republican opponent, Ari Kagan, according to The Associated Press.

Both are sitting councilors who came face to face with each other in the same district due to a redistribution. Kagan, a former radio and television host from Belarus who was elected as a Democrat in 2021, switched parties last year.

On Tuesday, Brannan called his victory a triumph over “toxic tribalism” and vowed to serve all voters, regardless of their political leanings.

In another Brooklyn district created to amplify the voices of Asian voters, Democrat Susan Zhuang defeated Republican Ying Tan. Both candidates built their campaigns around the issues of crime, education and the quality of life in New York City.

Elsewhere in the city, many Democrats ran unopposed, including Yusef Salaam, one of the so-called Central Park Five defendants, black and Latino men acquitted in 2002 of the rape and sexual assault of a female jogger in Central Park thirteen years earlier . Last summer he won a controversial primary in Harlem.

As Salaam prepared to deliver his victory speech on Tuesday, my colleague Jeffery C. Mays noted, it was not lost on him that former President Trump was facing multiple criminal trials. After Salaam’s arrest, Trump had called for the death penalty to be reinstated.

“Karma is real, and we have to remember that,” Salaam said.

Dear Diary:

One thing I always wanted to do was work at Macy’s in New York City. I was presented with this opportunity when business at my current job slowed down and management asked for volunteers to take unpaid leave.

I took a month and my husband and I went to New York City. We found a temporary apartment and I applied for a job at Macy’s over Christmas. I didn’t say I only wanted to work there for a month.

I was in my fifties at the time and started working with a group of men and women who were much younger.

The first day I learned how to operate the cash register and where everything was located in the store. It was so exciting.

When it was time for lunch, some younger women asked me to join them for lunch at McDonald’s. Wow. Of course I went. They mainly spoke Spanish. I didn’t understand them, but I didn’t care.

I couldn’t be more excited when the day was over, I clocked out and headed for the door. Outside, the young women shouted at me: Come on, Alice. It’s this way to the subway.

They wanted me to come with them, but I just said no thank you. I lived across the street.

–Alice Redmond

Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send your entries here And read more Metropolitan Diary here.

Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. – JB

PS Here is today’s Mini crossword And Game competition. You can find all our puzzles here.

Kellina Moore and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com.

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