May 2009 Archives

The Rev. Zhaodeng Peng, founder of the Tian Fu Church in Sunset Park, has built a congregation of 1,000 in five years.

By Kate Zhao & Sarah Trefethen

As published in the New York City News Service

Brooklyn - The stained glass windows, pipe organ and varnished wood could be taken for any U.S. church, at any time. So could the cheery, sing-along hymns - at least until hundreds of voices rise up to praise the lord in Mandarin.

Tian Fu Church started in Sunset Park only five years ago, sharing space with a small Latino congregation in a church built a century ago for a Norwegian parish. Tian Fu's founder, the Rev. Zhaodeng Peng, said his flock in New York City's third Chinatown has grown to include more than a thousand believers.

Sri Lanka's decades-old civil war is drawing to a close amid a dense media blackout. But for immigrants and refugees in North America, communication from family and loved ones trapped in the conflict zone have been an increasingly dire call to action.

It sounds like something your mother told you to never do in public, but the little-understood Uniform Land Use Review Procedure is a powerful force in the world of New York real estate.

Every inch of New York City, both public and private land, is granted a municipal identity through city rules that dictate what can be done where.

If you want the rules on a section of land waived or modified you have to ask permission - from just about everyone. The procedure is outlined in the city charter, and the details are fleshed out in the City Planning Commission's own set of rules.