Divine renovation plans get Desmond Tutu's blessing.

The Most Reverend Desmond Tutu, Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town, South Africa, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, joined in a gala reception and festival Eucharist at The General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church recently to bless the site of the new Desmond Tutu Education Center and inaugurate the public phase of the Leaders for the Church campaign.

The campaign will help preserve and transform the Seminary's historic Chelsea Square campus through a comprehensive plan of building, conservation and program initiatives. These will include construction and program development for the Tutu Center, a $23 million project now being created within three historic buildings along the Tenth Avenue side of the campus.

The first visible expression of the revitalization of Chelsea Square, the Tutu Center will provide new facilities for programs in peace and reconciliation, Jewish-Christian studies and relations, continuing education and Christian spirituality. Established and administered by GTS and named in honor of the Archbishop, the new education complex is designed by Beyer Blinder Belle Architects & Planners LLP and is scheduled to open in 2007.

According to the Very Reverend Ward B. Ewing, dean and president of The General Theological Seminary, "The Seminary's plans reflect a broader effort within the Episcopal Church. We are all striving to provide a gathering place where people can learn together and come to grips with today's important issues, spiritual, theological and ethical. Where should this take place, if not at General?"

The Tutu Center expresses a more outgoing presence in the city for GTS and its historic grounds, known as the Close. Built on land donated to GTS in 1819 by Clement Clarke Moore (the poet of "'Twas the night before Christmas"), the Chelsea Square campus and gardens have long been accessible to the public, and its centerpiece, the Chapel of the Good Shepherd, welcomes all worshippers. But with the Tutu Center, the Seminary will reach out to the city and neighborhood as never before.

For the past century, little has been visible of the campus along Tenth Avenue except for a high, blank wall. As part of its plan for the Tutu Center, GTS will open a public entrance on Tenth Avenue for the first time. In place of a forbidding stone wall topped by industrial chain link, GTS will install a beautiful, century-old wrought-iron fence that originally adorned the Seminary's Ninth Avenue frontage, with a welcoming new gateway.

Just beyond this entrance will be a garden, stretching for 100 feet along Tenth Avenue and extending 40 feet back at its deepest point. To enter the Tutu Center, visitors will walk along a garden path and then proceed into a new double-height lobby, which will introduce a contemporary, glass-and-steel element into the historic masonry structure. A matched entrance on the east side of the Center will open to the Close.

Inside the historic structures being renovated to create the Tutu Center, GTS is building two large, fully wired conference rooms, five smaller break-out rooms, 59 guest rooms with modern amenities and a new kitchen for Hoffman Hall's vaulted, oak-wainscotted dining room. This refectory, which has been called "one of New York's most beautiful interior spaces," will for the first time be regularly accessible to people outside the Seminary.

In a closely related initiative to preserve its historic Chelsea Square campus, the Seminary is also in the planning stages of a project on its Ninth Avenue side. Although building maintenance consumes a disproportionate amount of the Seminary's annual operating budget, GTS still faces an estimated $80 million of deferred maintenance. Unless GTS finds new revenue sources to pay for some of these maintenance costs, the mission of the Seminary could be seriously endangered.

To address this reality, GTS is now exploring the possibility of replacing Sherrill Hall with a new, mixed-use building, in partnership with The Brodsky Organization. The Ninth Avenue building will provide the Seminary with space for the St. Mark's Library, offices and other facilities. The Brodsky Organization will develop another portion of the building for use as rental or co-op apartments; the derived funds will help GTS pay for preservation projects throughout the campus. GTS and The Brodsky Organization have selected the architectural firm of Polshek Partnership to develop a design concept for the proposed building and the Seminary is now meeting with a range of community organizations to discuss its plans and listen to their ideas and concerns.

GTS already has invested $9 million in renovating architect Charles Coolidge Haight's historic buildings on the Close, built in the 19th century.

To support these stewardship projects and the creation of the Tutu Center, GTS launched its "Leaders for the Church" capital campaign in 2001, for which actor Sam Waterston serves as honorary chairman. The September visit to the campus by Archbishop Tutu marks the beginning of the public phase of the campaign, which has a goal of $15 million.