History

For 20 years (1999-2019), the Neighborhood Preservation Center operated as a co-working space and resource center in the rectory of St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery on New York’s Lower East Side. NPC was initially conceived and operated under an agreement between the St. Mark’s Historic Landmark Fund and St. Mark’s Church. It provided below market rate office and meeting space – both short term and long term – to community groups and nonprofits. NPC was a pioneer in the coworking space movement and, when it opened in 2000, the only nonprofit in the city that provided this service to community-focused and place-based organizations. Meetings at the rectory building gave voice to community needs and gave birth to organizations that spent their formative period there before taking the big leap in their organizational development to become the organizations they are today. At the rectory, NPC hosted some 6,500 meetings for several hundred groups, incubated 20 fledgling organizations (among them Friends of the High Line, Museum of Food and Drink, and ioby), and provided offices to established nonprofits. NPC worked to facilitate a supportive community and new partnerships, and became a hub for like-minded neighborhood preservationists to meet, co-work, and exchange information. NPC originally began as a project of the St. Mark’s Historic Landmark Fund intended to last 20 years, after which management of the rectory transferred back to the Church. In 2020, NPC began the process of reinventing itself as a virtual convening space and thought leader for the continued sustenance and stewardship of community spaces.

NPC 2.0

NPC’s new model as of 2024 continues to build on its repository of past experiences and knowledge, and provide and make accessible infrastructure for people and groups in the livable cities sector to convene, collaborate, and share ideas. We believe that there is much to be learned by collaborating between disciplines, and by hearing different voices and creating new types of spaces, we can achieve a more equitable, democratic, and healthy use of urban neighborhoods and digital spaces. We work to facilitate mutually beneficial connections between like-minded groups, convene community conversations, and champion neighborhoods. Through robust public programming, we advance and enable conversations about the need for community space – both physical and virtual – in order to improve the urban environment and quality of life. We aspire to be a central hub of technical resources and information for nonprofits looking for both short-term and long-term space, and to further the broader dissemination of those resources. We are based in New York City, but our interests and network are not limited to ideas and models only being used in New York City.