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(Helayne Seidman)
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During a Sunday morning service at Trinity Church last summer, a longtime parishioner looked around during the reading of the Gospel and counted the worshippers.
By her tally, there were 49 people in the pews of the historic lower Manhattan church — a meager turnout for the storied, 314-year-old parish.
She was puzzled, then, when the next week’s church bulletin reported attendance at 113.
Trinity’s rector, the Rev. James Cooper, had decided that tourists who wander in and out of the chapel should be counted as well, she was told.
“That’s just a little snapshot into the way he presents everything,” said the parishioner, who was also a member of the governing board until she resigned in protest. “Everything has a little bit of truth to it but a lot of deception around it.”
Playing fast and loose with the numbers, and official church records, is one of the many complaints that dog the man who heads the richest parish in the Anglican world, a church with at least $1 billion in Manhattan real estate.
Cooper was supposed to be the guardian angel of Trinity. Instead, former board members say his dictatorial style of leadership and grandiose ambitions have fomented insurrection in the staid Episcopal community. They accuse him of undermining Trinity’s mission of good works since taking over as rector in 2004.
Instead of helping the poor, Cooper’s helped himself — with demands for a $5.5 million SoHo townhouse, an allowance for his Florida condo, trips around the world including an African safari and a fat salary.
Rather than building an endowment, he is accused of wasting more than $1 million on development plans for a luxury condo tower that has been likened to a pipe dream and burning another $5 million on a publicity campaign.
Cooper, 67, whose compensation totaled $1.3 million in 2010, even added CEO to his title of rector. He began listing himself first on the annual directory of vestry members.
The atmosphere has become so poisonous that nearly half the 22 members of the vestry, or board, have been forced out or quit in recent months.
“You have diminished Trinity Church, and you have created a glaring atmosphere of deceit,” the longtime parishioner wrote in a letter resigning her position on the board.
Eight members of the vestry, which includes heavy hitters in finance, law and philanthropy, abruptly left in February and two quit months earlier. Four of them were critics of Cooper who resigned immediately after not being renominated to serve for another year by Cooper’s hand-picked committee.
The relationship between the board and Cooper became so tense that, over the summer, Cooper agreed to quietly step down but requested a generous retirement package first, according to interviews and documents obtained by The Post.
But Cooper then reconsidered, and the dissenting board members were powerless to remove him. Instead, some found themselves in his sights.
“When the fox ends up guarding the henhouse, it never ends well for the chickens,” ousted board member Thomas Flexner, global head of real estate for Citigroup, wrote in a Feb. 13 resignation letter. “But this is what has happened at Trinity.”
Cooper has his defenders. A current board member, Susan Berresford, said the 600-member church has “full confidence in the leadership of Trinity’s rector.”
“Even during these challenging economic times, Trinity’s ministries are strong, flourishing and addressing a full range of social and spiritual needs,” said Berresford, former president of the Ford Foundation.
Trinity Church opened its doors in 1698 at Broadway and Wall Street, chartered by King William III of England. Seven years later, Queen Anne gave the church a wide swath of land, 215 acres that stretched from Wall to Christopher streets and the banks of the Hudson.
George Washington and Alexander Hamilton worshipped at Trinity, and Hamilton is buried in its graveyard on Trinity Place.
The original church burned down in 1776 as the British took Manhattan, but was rebuilt twice. The current Gothic Revival brownstone church, with its distinctive spire, opened in 1846.
Today, Trinity’s holdings — in addition to the church and nearby St. Paul’s Chapel — include 14 commercial buildings in the Hudson Square area of Manhattan.
The revenue from the rents is some $200 million a year, which pays the operating expenses of the commercial properties and funds the operations of the church.
When Trinity leaders were looking for a new rector in 2003 to replace the Rev. Daniel Matthews, who retired, they wanted someone who could build a true endowment for their philanthropic work, former board members said.
The search committee considered Cooper, then the rector of Christ Episcopal Church in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla. Cooper’s candidacy was originally rejected because some felt he was not up to the job, according to former board members.
But Cooper “wanted this job more than anybody else and put on a very hard sell,” according to one former director. Cooper was hired in 2004.
Among the perks Cooper negotiated was a lavish home in SoHo, a Federal-style townhouse built in the 1820s with a price tag of $5.5 million.
“He chose the residence and said this shall be the rectory,” a former board member said. “Not in recent history . . . has the church ever provided so extravagant a living arrangement for the rector, but that’s what he wanted.”
The church bought the property, located in a landmark district, and has sunk hundreds of thousands more into its upkeep and renovation, recently installing new windows to the tune of $100,000.
Cooper also convinced the church to pay him a cash housing allowance, which totaled $115,313 in 2010, ostensibly for the home he still owned in Florida.
His $1.3 million compensation package also included a salary of $346,391 and deferred compensation of $507,940, according to 2010 tax documents, the latest available.
Instead of concentrating on the endowment, Cooper began planning for a grand development on Trinity Place. He proposed tearing down two Trinity-owned buildings across from the church. One, a 25-story tower at 74 Trinity Place, housed the church offices, its preschool and a gathering place for parishioners.
Cooper wanted to build a luxury condominium tower, with church offices on the lower floors. He also looked at buying the adjacent American Stock Exchange and demolishing it, even though the building has long been considered for landmark status.
One former board member called the plan insensitive and too big for the area. Others questioned the need for such a development, which would involve borrowing hundreds of millions of dollars.
A board committee in June requested a detailed report on proposed uses of the complex, but it never materialized and the meeting minutes never reflected the request, charged Andrew Lynn, director of planning and regional development at the Port Authority, who quit the board.
“This manipulation of the minutes is part of a pattern, in which inconvenient issues raised by the vestry are air brushed out of the record,” Lynn wrote in a December missive.
Another former board member said Cooper spent years studying the condo development, “not at all paying attention to the principal focus of those that hired him, which was try to solve the problem and try to make the church more of a powerful force in the philanthropy world.”
Trinity has had a long tradition of global giving and has taken credit for being one of the early opponents of apartheid in South Africa. It gave millions to the activist Bishop Desmond Tutu.
But for years, Trinity’s grant program gave out only $2.7 million annually, despite having the resources to fund more causes, a former board member said.
More money was spent on church publicity in one year — $5 million — than grants.
Last year, Trinity doled out grants to causes including a jobs program in Bedford-Stuyvesant and to churches in Africa.
Cooper traveled to Africa on church business but found time to fit in at least one safari, with his family along, at Trinity’s expense. The church also paid for jaunts to Asia and Australia.
The longtime and respected head of the grants program, the Rev. James Callaway, was forced out by Cooper, according to a former board member.
Callaway refused to comment, and the church said he continues there as a program adviser.
The church, in response to questions from The Post, said Cooper “has taken steps to grow the liquid endowment” and is weighing a plan to repair its building at 74 Trinity Place or build a new one. Officials refused to comment on the safari. As for the Sunday Mass miscount, the church denied counting gawkers — or at least ones that don’t sit down.
“Ushers measure church attendance at services by people in the pews.”
Trinity’s $1 billion empire
Trinity Church is one of the largest landowners in Manhattan, with some 6 million square feet of commercial space. The holdings also include a chapel on Governors Island and a cemetery in northern Manhattan and numerous office buildings in the Hudson Square area.
Trinity Church
Broadway at Wall Street
Trinity Church offices
74 Trinity Place 25 stories
Trinity Cemetery and Mausoleum
770 Riverside Drive
St. Paul’s Chapel
Broadway at Fulton Street
PLUS
A $5.5 million townhouse at 37 Charlton St. bought for rector the Rev. James Cooper
Selected Hudson Square commercial properties (the church owns 14) and notable tenants:
225 Varick St.
12 stories, 236,749 sq. ft.
National Audubon Society, HSBC
75 Varick St.
17 stories,
1,174,100 sq. ft.
Getty Images,
New York magazine
160-170 Varick St.
12 stories,
349,720 square feet
Hudson Square Market
143 Varick St.
2 stories, 38,055 sq. ft.
City Winery
200 Hudson St.
12 stories, 386,820 sq. ft.; 92YTribeca
345 Hudson St.
17 stories,
984,432 sq. ft.
Viacom
435 Hudson St.
9 stories, 291,064 sq. ft.
L’Oreal USA,
NY Review of Books