The sale was not conducted through a competitive auction or an open-market listing. Living Christ Church is a nonprofit religious institution incorporated under New York law, and the sale of its real property required court approval, which was granted in August 2025.[1] The town acquired a stretch of Hudson River waterfront roughly the size of four and a half football fields for the combined price of about five houses in the surrounding neighborhood, where individual homes on fractional-acre lots without waterfront access currently list for $550,000 and above.[3]

The seller and the proceeds

Living Christ Church has been part of the South Nyack community since 1945 and acquired the Piermont Avenue waterfront property in 1972, when an old riverfront building became available, for use as youth program space and staff housing.[4] The court-approved distribution of the sale proceeds directed $100,000 to helping Nyack’s poor through the church’s Sunday Supper program, $100,000 to grants administered by the Metropolitan District of the Christian and Missionary Alliance, $100,000 to support the church’s missionaries, and approximately $500,000 to improvements at other church-owned properties in Nyack, with the balance invested for the congregation’s longer-term needs.[1]

How Orangetown funded the acquisition

Orangetown paid for the property from its general fund reserves without issuing new debt or raising taxes. At the time of the purchase, the town’s financial position, as reported in Supervisor Kenny’s January 2026 State of the Town address, included a fiscal stress score of 0.0 on the New York State Comptroller’s Fiscal Stress Monitoring System, an AA2 bond rating from Moody’s (the highest of any municipality in Rockland County), compliance with the state’s two-percent property tax cap, and a general fund balance of $29.8 million.[5] The purchase price represented approximately ten percent of those reserves.

Why the property was in Orangetown’s jurisdiction

The Piermont Avenue property sits in what was, until March 31, 2022, the incorporated Village of South Nyack. South Nyack had governed itself as an independent municipality since 1878, but in December 2020 its residents voted 508 to 292 to dissolve the village and merge into Orangetown.[6][7] The dissolution transferred all of South Nyack’s assets, liabilities, zoning authority, and municipal records to the town.[8]

South Nyack’s annual budget could not have supported an acquisition of this size. Orangetown’s budget and reserves could. The dissolution placed the former South Nyack waterfront within the jurisdiction of a municipality with the financial capacity to acquire and preserve it as public open space.

What comes next

Detailed plans for the waterfront park have not yet been made public.[1] The acquisition follows the town’s recent purchase of the DePew House in New City through the Rockland County Open Space Acquisition Program, a county-municipal partnership for land preservation.[9] Orangetown maintains more than two dozen park sites, including the Clarke Rail Trail and the Shanks Memorial, which commemorates Camp Shanks, the largest World War II embarkation camp in the United States.[10]

This article is part of The Record, a series examining public records in Rockland County, New York. The author has no financial interest in any of the properties or transactions described.

Endnotes

[1] Rockland County Business Journal, “What’s The Big Deal?” September 17, 2025. Reports the sale price of $3,050,000, the property address at 149 to 157 Piermont Avenue (six acres), the seller as Living Christ Church of the Christian and Missionary Alliance Inc., court approval by Justice Rachel E. Tanguay in August 2025, the town board resolution adopted unanimously in June 2025, the allocation of proceeds, and Supervisor Kenny’s stated vision for a waterfront park.

[2] Town of Orangetown parks inventory, orangetown.com/parks. Lists all existing town park sites, none of which are located on the Hudson River waterfront. Orangetown was formed on March 7, 1788.

[3] Homes.com, “South Nyack, Orangetown Real Estate,” accessed May 2026. Reports current residential market data for the South Nyack area, with smaller homes priced between $550,000 and $785,000 and larger or renovated properties ranging from $750,000 to $1.2 million. Undeveloped waterfront acreage in the lower Hudson Valley is extremely scarce, and six contiguous acres with direct river frontage represents a parcel type that essentially does not appear on the open market.

[4] Living Christ Church, “History & Heritage,” lccnyack.org. Records the church’s founding on March 26, 1945, with a charter membership of 56, and states that “in 1972, when an old riverfront building on Piermont Avenue became available, the church purchased it to add more room for the youth programs and to provide apartments for two staff members.”

[5] AM Rockland News, January 12, 2026, reporting on Supervisor Teresa M. Kenny’s State of the Town address. The Comptroller’s Fiscal Stress Monitoring System assigns scores from 0.0 to 65.0 or higher, with 0.0 indicating no fiscal stress.

[6] “South Nyack, New York,” Wikipedia, citing Rockland County municipal records and U.S. Census data. See also “The Villages: South Nyack is No Longer a Village,” Nyack News & Views, April 2022.

[7] Rockland County Business Journal, “Nyack College Sale Closes; South Nyack Residents Vote To Dissolve Village,” December 19, 2020. The dissolution referendum was held on December 17, 2020. The vote was certified by the Rockland Board of Elections from among 1,982 registered voters.

[8] Final Village of South Nyack Dissolution Plan, adopted July 2021, available at orangetown.com. Covers the transfer of assets, liabilities, municipal records, zoning authority, police services, fire services, and other village functions.

[9] Rockland County news release, rocklandcountyny.gov. The DePew House at 101 Old Route 304 in New City was acquired through the County’s Open Space Acquisition Program.

[10] Town of Orangetown, “Parks, Trails, and Open Spaces,” orangetown.com/parks. Camp Shanks processed over 1.3 million soldiers for departure to the European theater between 1942 and 1945.