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Earlier this year, 211 dead bodies were removed from the grounds of the Bay Ridge United Methodist Church (aka the "Green Church") in order to make room for demolition of the site, which at the time was to become new luxury (unhaunted) condos. Now the Brooklyn Paper has it that the city is looking to buy the land for a new school. "The School Construction Authority is planning to purchase the former site of the emerald-hued Church to construct a kindergarten- through eighth-grade school that could seat between 600 and 700 students, according to Dena Libner, a spokeswoman for Councilman Vince Gentile (D–Bay Ridge)." Developer Abe Betesh had purchased the land for $9.75 million and made way for a 72-unit apartment building on the site, "but the city rejected his construction permit — and Betesh put up his 'For Sale' sign." The general consensus is to bring in something that would benefit the community, but when the project begins with digging up dead bodies can this really end well?
No More Condos for Bay Ridge "Green Church" Site
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It's the same media that NEVER mentioned Muslims' hatred of Israel as a possible motive for 9/11.
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Apparently no one involved with this has seen Poltergeist. Craig T. Nelson won't save you this time.
Re graveyard, and in the interest of accuracy:
Most stories about this place make the unburials sound horror-movie-esque, as if 200+ whole bodies were dug up from a regular (as we know it) graveyard.
It piqued my curiosity when the story first hit -- because I passed that place regularly, it had just one (1) headstone, and I couldn't see _how_ 200+ whole burials could fit in that small space, even if they were vaulted or buried several-deep.
So I checked and found that
-- all 200+ bodies had been moved to that church from _another_ cemetery, in 1902, and were the only burials on the (now-demolished) church grounds.
-- they weren't really "bodies" ... because when the NYT covered that 1902 mass-disinterment, it said that some of the burials were 100 years old _then_, so not all living kin were findable; the old graveyard hadn't been used for 25 years; and bodies actually crumbled to dust when they hit the air.
See "Ground" story, at:
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9D02EEDA1E3BEE33A25757C1A9619C946097D6CF
-- when reburied at the church, all of the remains were placed in one underground vault (with that one headstone I saw, which didn't list individual names).
So the _1902_ unburials were pretty ghoulish, since they had to dig up 200+ coffined bodies for transfer to the church vault ... and it was done more "publicly" than we'd do today.
But to move them in 2008: The church just had to open the vault and remove recontainered remains (probably in smaller bone-boxes -- for lack of a better word).
That's a less dramatic story, but at least I found out how all those people could fit in such limited space.
Thanks for the research, siccer!