CHICAGO (IL)
Chelsea News [Chicago, IL]
August 12, 2026
By Keith J. Kelly
City Council Member Carl Wilson and other preservationists staged a rally outside Our Lady of Guadalupe Church, Aug. 12 They called on the Landmarks Preservation Commission to intervene. The Archdiocese is trying to raise $800 million to pay survivors of sexual assault.
As part of its continuing efforts to raise $800 million for a fund to pay past victims of sexual abuse, the Catholic Archdiocese of New York is putting three more West Side complexes on the block including two schools and one church.
At a “Stop the sale” rally on Aug. 12, City Council member Carl Wilson revealed that the buildings that the Archdiocese is now seeking to sell include Our Lady of Guadalupe Church at 328 West 14th Street, the shut down elementary school of Guardian Angel at 193 10th Ave. that closed in 2023, and the shut down St. Michael’s Academy, a former all girls high school at 425 West 31st. St. that closed in 2010.
He and other preservationists urged the Landmarks Preservation Commission to grant the historic buildings landmark protection. He said all the buildings are over 100 years old with deep ties to the city’s immigrant past.
”We are here today because the archdiocese of New York is considering the sale of important properties on the West Side as it seeks to meet its financial obligations to survivors of clergy sexual abuse,” said City Council member Carl Wilson who said he learned of the plan at a meeting with archdiocese officials last month.
“Let me be clear from the outset: survivors deserve justice,” said Wilson. “They deserve accountability and the deserve compensation for the horrific abuse they endured. But the archdiocese should not pay for its failures by selling off irreplaceable pieces of our neighborhoods.”
“Our communities should not be asked to sacrifice their history and their institutions to pay the church’s debt.” said Wilson, who said he learned of the Archdiocese’s plans in late July.
The Archdiocese is scrambling to raise money to pay off approximately 1,300 survivors of sexual abuse. According to a plan it reached with lawyers for the plaintiffs in late April, the Archdiocese agreed to settle the cases for $800 million, but with the provision that all the survivors had to agree to the offer by July 29. The Archdiocese has warned pastors in April that it was hundreds of millions of dollar short of the needed funds and if the parishes did not kick in the needed funds then the Archdiocese would declare bankruptcy.
At the same time, past selloffs of buildings including its former headquarters at 1011 First Ave. for over $100 million October, 2024 and the sale of the land under the Lotte New York Palace Hotel in December 2025 for $490 million still left the fund short. The Archdiocese said the fund had $300 million.
In a report first reported by us exclusively in April, the Archdiocese called pastors of all parishes to a secret meeting at St. Joseph’s seminary at Dunwoodie in Yonkers and warned that if the parishes did not pony up the additional funds, the archdiocese would be forced into Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
The deadline for plaintiffs represented by Jeff Anderson and Trusha Goffe at Jeff Anderson and Associates to accept the all or nothing deal was initially set at July 29. Calls to Jeff Anderson and Associates for comment on the status of the negotiations were not returned by press time.
Wilson was joined by NYS Senator Eric Bottcher, and activists including Andrew Berman of Village Preservation and Robert Sanders of La Nacional, a Hispanic organization that has been active in the city for over 100 years as well as the head of Community Board 4, Stacy Johnson. “We have been trying to get this building landmarked since 2023,” he said. “Spanish New Yorkers today make up more than 30 percent of New Yorkers.”
We can ensure justice for survivors by preserving the history of our neighborhoods,” Berman said.
The parish was actually founded in 1902 as the first Spanish language parish in the city but was based further down West 14th Street in an area once known as “Little Spain.” It moved into the former St. Bernard church in a parish merger 2003 into a building that was once a brownstone rowhouse and which had a Spanish revival facade added in 1921.
Each December on the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe, thousands of celebrate with a colorful procession from the church in Chelsea through the streets of the west side to St. Patrick’s Cathedral. It concludes with a standing room only Mass that was celebrated in recent years by Cardinal Timothy Dolan.
All of the speakers called on the Landmark Preservation Commission to declare them landmarks which would spare them being sold to developers.
Wilson said that the Guardian Angel Church was built by dock workers who once worked on the piers that dotted the West Side of Manhattan.
East Side Selloffs
In addition to the selloffs now underway in Chelsea, the Archdiocese has put the former St. Brigid School at 185 E. 7th St. across from Tompkins Square Park in the East Village on the block.
It is being marketed as a potential luxury condo development by Avison Young. That sell off does not include the historic St. Brigid Church, erected by Irish immigrants in the 1840s. The Archdiocese had attempted to sell off the church in the past, but it was blocked from demolishing it by a court order and eventually a mystery benefactor put up $20 million to save the church. At the time, it also included the school but that was shut down at the end of the 2018-19 school year due to declining enrollment.
In 2024, the Archdiocese in another Lower East Side deal, sold off the site of the former St. Emeric school and church on 181 Ave. D for $58 million to Spatial Equity and Community Access, with the plan to build over 500 units of affordable housing.
The St. Brigid School had been rented to the city during the migrant crisis as the residential check in center for migrants the five boroughs. At the height of the crisis long lines of asylum seekers stretched down the block, as migrants sought short term housing in the city’s overcrowded shelter system.
Upper West Side Selloff
Last year, the Rockefeller Group and Atlas Capital agreed to purchase 200 West 97th St. from the Holy Name of Jesus and St. Gregory the Great parish for $96 million. St. Gregory the Great parish was actually deconsecrated in 2017 when it merged with Holy Name of Jesus. The historic church building and rectory at Holy Name of Jesus were not included in the sale of the former school and convent.
The developers said they planned a mixed income residential building on the property.