South of EP: The church at Rogers between Carrol and Crown is torn down. Residential on the way

I wish they'd start later in the day. So bloody loud. I think they're behind schedule and are rushing to get done by the Fall of 2015. I haven't seen a construction site speed along this quickly. Perhaps the Vatican coffers needs the rent money to pay of the priestly sins.

it's a pretty insane story: 

oh, yeah, they're delusional--this building is obviously happening. but calling attention to the seedy tax deal has to count for something, right? 

What happens to the building after 99 years?  The church takes ownership and becomes the landlord?

It's interesting that on this board and in other places on the internet, the story of Crown Heights having been a black neighborhood "only for the last 30-40 years" is repeatedly parroted. Somehow the fact that the neighborhood was gentrified over the course of the first half of the 20th century and the black residents living here pre-gentrification literally carved a neighborhood out of the woods is conveniently forgotten. I guess twenty years from now, I can look forward to being asked "What are you doing in this neighborhood?". 

Per Wikipedia:

Crown Heights had begun as a posh residential neighborhood, a "bedroom"[clarification needed] for Manhattan's growing bourgeois class. The area benefited by having its rapid transit in a subway configuration, the IRT Eastern Parkway Line (2 3 4 5 trains), in contrast to many other Brooklyn neighborhoods, which had elevated lines. Conversion to a commuter town also included tearing down the 19th century Kings County Penitentiary at Carroll Street and Nostrand Avenue.[9]

Beginning in the early 1900s, many upper-class residences, including characteristic brownstone buildings, were erected along Eastern Parkway.[why?] Away from the parkway were a mixture of lower middle-class residences. This development peaked in the 1920s. Before World War II Crown Heights was among New York City's premier neighborhoods, with tree-lined streets, an array of cultural institutions and parks, and numerous fraternal, social and community organizations.

Population changes began in the 1920s with newcomers from Jamaica and the West Indies, as well as African Americans from the South.

From the '40s through the '60s, many middle class Jews lived in Crown Heights. In 1950, the neighborhood was 89 percent white, with some 50 to 60 percent of the white population, or about 75,000 people, being Jewish, and a small, growing black population. By 1957, there were about 25,000 blacks in Crown Heights, making up about one-fourth of the population.[10] There were thirty-four large synagogues in the neighborhood, including the Bobov, Chovevei Torah, and 770 Eastern Parkway, home of the worldwide Lubavitch movement. There were also three prominent Yeshiva elementary schools in the neighborhood, Crown Heights Yeshiva on Crown Street, the Yeshiva of Eastern Parkway, and the Reines Talmud Torah.