KEEPING THE FAITH; Harlem's aging houses of worship are grappling with the neighborhood's development boom

The average price of land in Harlem has nearly tripled from $85 per buildable square foot in 2010 to $237 last year, still a bargain compared with the $634 for Manhattan as a whole, according to real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield. Sales of churches need to be reviewed by both the state Supreme Court and the state attorney general's charities bureau. St. Stephen Community African Methodist Episcopal Church, at West 116th Street and Frederick Douglass Boulevard, has been locked in an eight-year legal dispute with developers over an unfinished church space. "The ceiling collapsed, the sound system is not wired properly, the stadium seating uses the wrong gauge steel, the steps are uneven, the sewage system runs under the church and odors keep emanating, and the air conditioning is broken," said the Rev. C. Carlton Woodward, the church's spiritual leader.