The designation in January of the West Park Presbyterian Church on the northeast corner of Amsterdam Avenue at 86th Street as a landmark by the Landmarks Preservation Commission was upheld Wednesday by the City Council.

The Rev. Dr. Robert L. Brashear, the pastor of the Romanesque Revival-style building whose congregation opposed the landmark designation, declared that "Forced landmarking has the effect of imposing the governmental idea of mission on the congregation," adding that "there is a profound church-state issue here" and "religious liberty has not been well-served by this decision."

According to an article by Robin Pogrebin in yesterday's edition of The New York Times, Dr. Brashear "estimated that it would cost $11 million to $12 million to restore the church, which has been closed about two years because of physical deterioration."

The congregation has been meeting for the past two years or so at the Church of St. Paul and St. Andrew on the northeast corner of West End Avenue and 86th Street.

The congregation has pursued numerous redevelopment deals that would have permitted it to remain at the Amsterdam site including a plan to demolish the eastern section for a new apartment building while retaining the church's tower at the corner.

Gale A. Brewer, a city councilwoman from the Upper West Side who helped lead efforts to preserve the church, acknowledged in the article in The New York Times on Wednesday, "There is a lot of work to be done," and Kate Wood, executive director of Landmark West, a nonprofit preservation group that had advocated for saving West Park, said she was optimistic that the church would have a new life: "We've got the political support, we've got the passion and the love for this building....It's going to happen."

The red-stone building, one of the most prominent on the Upper West Side, was designed in 1890 by Henry F. Kilburn.

The New York Post ran an editorial in January stating that the landmark commission's vote was "to cast falling debris, forbidding scaffolding and scruffy vagrants in amber for residents of the Upper West Side to gaze upon into perpetuity," adding that the church will now "stand, in all its decrepit glory, until gravity pulls it down - which, given its present structural instability, might not be all that long."

The church had entered into an agreement with Bill Traylor, president of Richman Housing Services, to erect a 21-story apartment building on part of the site and that building would have contained 50 "affordable" rental apartments and 27 "market-rate condominium apartments, as well as 25,000 square feet of community space and new skylit congregation space near the top of the existing sanctuary structure just to the west of the church's clocktower, which would have been preserved under the redevelopment plan.

The affordable apartments would have all been studios and located on floors 5 through 10 with a separate entrance and the condo units on floors 11 through 21, would have their separate entrance with a marquee in the new mid-block tower that would have cantilevered slightly over the rear of the sanctuary structure.

Mr. Traylor said that that the physical condition of the existing church was poor and that his company would pay the church $15 million for the development rights and that $5 million of that will create an endowment fund for the church and that if the renovation and construction of the church space costs more than $10 million his company will pay for it. Mr. Traylor's company is the sixth largest residential property owner in the United States. Mr. Traylor said the plan was not using about 10,000 square feet of the church's development rights. He said his company was not pursuing other development rights that have been offered by adjacent properties and that his company and the church wanted the project to be in context with the neighborhood.