Garen Yegparian
BY GAREN YEGPARIAN
It seems there is chatter about, or perhaps it is serious consideration of, selling the property owned by the Armenian Diocese (Eastern USA) on which its St. Vartan Cathedral sits, just as that structure’s 50th anniversary hits this year. It is prime property in mid-town Manhattan, and clearly worth millions (based on VERY rough measurements off a computer monitor and a New York Times estimate of $90 million for an acre of land in the area, I get a figure of $75 million for the parcel in question).
I happened upon this issue through two letters to the editor published by the Armenian Mirror Spectator. It’s not clear to me as of this writing whether it is the land itself or just the air rights above it that are up for sale. The two letters I reference render this unclear to me. Perhaps it is both.
Regardless, such a sale would be a crime against our communities and nation. Owning property such as this parcel does not come easy. There is a reference in one of the letters to insufficient attention paid to the property’s needs by the relevant leadership. But it can’t be too late to fix the situation. If nothing else, the crooked catholicos under whose auspices this institution rests could cough up some of his ill-gotten gains, at least temporarily, to tide the cathedral over until a better, longer term solution can be found.
St..Vartan Cathedral of New York City
My thought is that such property should never be sold, keeping in mind Mark Twain’s famous advice – “Buy land, they’re not making it anymoreâ€
