The historic St. Paul's building stands in the village as Cornelia Stewart's memorial to her husband, Garden City founder Alexander T. Stewart. With overwhelming residential approval, the village acquired the Victorian Gothic structure on Stewart Avenue through condemnation from the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island in 1993. The 48.6-acre complex has since become an integral part of the community's heritage, providing space for athletic activities and community events, including the successful Breeders' Cup Garden City Community Fund Family Relief Fund Benefit held at the field house last October.

The Mayor's Committee on St. Paul's, originally formed in 1993, currently opposes tearing down the main historic building but favors, in the best interest of the village, demolishing Ellis Hall and the cottages. Further, it recommends the appointment of a "St. Paul's Conservancy" committee to promote increased utilization of interior space of the main building for residential use and encourages a constituency within the village for expansion of community use of the entire campus. Community organizations that are potential candidates include the senior citizen center, the youth center, the historical society, the men's association, a computer-based library, athletic organizations, winter club (similar to the village pool complex during the summer) and the Garden City Community Center.

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places and viewed by most as a significant value to Garden City, numerous proposals have been offered over the years as to what to do with the empty building. Through nine years of considerable brainstorming, the Mayor's Committee on St. Paul's reconvened back in June 2000 to determine if the building could be adapted internally to accommodate projected space requirements for village governmental functions, school district administration offices and related community use.

Committee members hired the firm of Einhorn Yaffee Prescott, Architecture and Engineering, P.C. (EYP) as a consultant to carry out the committee's charge - to consider municipal use. A conditions survey and program study (dated March 5, 2002) revealed that the main building has the necessary physical capacity for such uses. Because it would have been "prohibitively expensive" to reuse the property as a village hall, police and fire departments, village justice court, school administration offices and village library, the board of trustees directed the Mayor's Committee to search for another use, one which would be compatible with the community's residential nature.

Members then proposed a senior assisted living residence that would have preserved the building at no cost to taxpayers and would not have interfered with the village's use of the field house, Cluett Hall and acres of open fields.

The exorbitant $18 million plus price tag and lack of interest of the library and board of education to relocate, the board of trustees abandoned the thought of rehabilitating the building for municipal purposes. The school district even considered buying the building and using it as a high school but that idea never panned out when cost estimates reached as high as $50 million.

Redirected to find another use, the Mayor's Committee received interest from 35 parties to potentially use the building as a boutique, restaurants, a theater, a catering hall and other commercial enterprises. Another interested party even contemplated developing the building into a residential adjunct to the Garden City Hotel. Adelphi University expressed profound interest in possibly using the buildings as an 'Honors College" or as faculty and administration offices.

Little Village School, whose lease to use the Hemlock School was expiring at that time, expressed interest, along with BOCES. The St. Paul's Alumni Group, who fought the school's closing in 1991, offered to reopen a new St. Paul's School complete with a day school, a music and drama academy, a school for language and communication development and more. Various museums also communicated interest.

Approved plans for the development of a senior assisted living residence came to an abrupt halt in 1997 when village residents James and Helen Kenny joined Lawrence and Barbara Rafferty in a lawsuit to prevent the village from leasing the main building and some surrounding land to CareMatrix, a private developer, to create an assisted living facility.

The Kenny case, as it became known, claimed the village's plan to lease a portion of the complex for an assisted living facility was in "violation of the stated intent of the village's purchase of the property." Last December, the Appellate Division upheld an original court decision that stated the property could not be sold or leased to a commercial entity without legislature approval because doing so would be "an illegal alienation of a public trust policy."

The Mayor's Committee report considers preserving the building's "historic qualities" as an important issue. The conditions survey and program study outlines projected degrees of space utilization, including stabilization (i.e. mothballing) without occupancy; threshold use (i.e. stabilization plus enhancement for limited public use); municipal uses (i.e. exterior restoration beyond stabilization and threshold use levels plus adaptive reuse of interiors for village hall/fire/police and school district administration); or future use (i.e. adaptive reuse completion for undetermined community uses). Stabilization secures the main building from further deterioration that would preclude subsequent reuse. EYP recommends installing a new permanent roof over the entire building, priority exterior masonry repairs and window and door replacement and repairs. EYP estimates stabilization costs to reach $4.5 million. Threshold use is an initial phase of utilization introduced for several practical reasons. First off, stabilization alone, while securing the building envelope, leaves the building as vacant as was the former St. Mary's School. Second, the work of rehabilitation necessary for this threshold use is a no-waste contribution to any future development. Third, doing nothing in terms of long-term preservation is a protracted act of demolition. Four, the result of the lawsuit enjoining any form of commercial use challenges the village to "set the stage" for various municipal uses.

According to the study, threshold use opens to residents a historically significant interior portion of the ground floor in expectation that this limited initial opening could generate "impetus for future community uses."

Threshold use construction includes upgrading the building's mechanical, electrical and fire protection systems. It also provides for necessary related site development work and the demolition of Ellis Hall and the cottages. Required construction builds on completed stabilization work. Depending on scope, according to the study, threshold use costs can range from $6 to $9 million.

The lower estimate is based on installing temporary protection over areas of the roof other than the South Wing rather than permanent re-roofing. Committee members recommend complete, permanent re-roofing.

The first three phases of the EYP study provide for significant municipal uses in accordance with the committee's charge. Construction costs, broken by phased degrees of space utilization, assume completion of work of previous stages of development. Phase I represents an aggregate cost estimate of $15 million; Phase 2 $31.8 million; and Phase 3 $36 million. These estimates are for construction only and do not include monies for moving expenses and/or necessary new furnishings and equipment. The last area for development is located on the building's fourth floor. Its implementation brings the aggregate total cost to renovate the entire building to $37.4 million. The committee discussed other alternatives for rehabilitating the building but all, however, necessitate partial destruction of the building. One such alternative - demolishing the West and Center (chapel) wings with renovation of two floors for village hall use only - was estimated to cost a minimum of $25.4 million. Committee members believe partial demolition to be undesirable because it "seriously and irreparably damages the architectural significance of the building, especially loss of its complex, turreted roof scape." Second, members feel partial demolition compromises the mayor's charge to preserve the building and the cost to rebuild areas left exposed by the amputations may bring the total cost close to that for threshold use ($6-$9 million).

EYP estimated demolition costs, including the removal of hazardous materials, and in the cases of Ellis Hall and the cottages, minimum regarding and seeding, to be $4,049,000. The committee believes that nothing less than park-like landscaping would be suitable for the main building site, including the creation of an appropriate memorial in commemoration of A.T. Stewart and St. Paul's School.

The mayor and village board is in receipt of the committee's report and said they appreciate Committee Chairman Brian Deveney's as well as the committee's "nine year effort to benefit present and future generations and for their extraordinary expenditure of time and professional expertise."

Mayor Robert Lewis said, "The board has a great deal of information to consider and we will be meeting with EYP in the immediate future to further explore their findings in conjunction with the mayor's committee's recommendation."

Whatever does become of the landmark is ultimately in the hands of the board of trustees. "I know some people who said they'll throw themselves in front of the wrecking ball if demolition is approved," one resident said.