BUFFALO, N.Y. — The effort continues to seek landmark status with historic preservation to protect specific churches in Buffalo, which will be closed by the Buffalo Catholic Diocese.
This is a push to safeguard some of the churches earmarked for shutdown by the Diocese. Some Council members already seem supportive, even with rather dramatic claims made by the organization advocating for that landmark designation .
Members of Preservation Buffalo Niagara are leading the charge and Tuesday they went before Council's Legislation Committee to seek that local landmark status for these Buffalo churches in particular: St. Thomas Aquinas, Our Lady of Perpetual Help , St. John Kanty, St. Rose of Lima, and St. Stanislaus.
Preservation Buffalo leaders set up the Save Our Sacred Sites movement and said this is a very serious effort with supporters having to pay up to $2,500 dollars in each of the five cases. That includes a 500 dollar application fee to the city and then associated staff work costs for each application including meetings, research, communication etc.
They contend there is a payoff if the saved church structures can be successfully rehabbed by developers and put back on the city tax rolls. They used examples of past re-purposed church structures. Preservation Buffalo Niagara Executive Director Bernice Radel told Council members, "I wanted to say since the city of Buffalo needs more tax revenue, that we did research on three locally landmarked important historic preservation churches and they're paying between $6,000 and $25,000 dollars in taxes. So it's really in our best interests to protect these buildings."
The Council committee also heard from Kathleen Burns, a supporter of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, who spoke about their financial commitments from the congregation and other sources. There was a $30,000 restoration of one main stained glass window in the church.
"We spent $350,000 dollars repairing all of the other windows in the church. They were collapsing. And we do this mostly with fundraisers and we do it with parishioner donations and non parishioner donations," Burns said.
Fillmore District Councilmember Mitch Nowakowski strongly supports the effort and now Councilmember Joe Golombek, Jr. has added his voice to the choir. He said "The last three churches that I belonged to were all shut down by the Diocese, so I'm convinced that I'm that jinx. So I am now a roaming Catholic who periodically goes to different churches. But not to one. But I support not just this church but every single one of these churches for their landmark status because I do want to keep the history of Buffalo alive in all of its different facets."
Council is scheduled to vote on this local landmark status request for the five churches later this month. It was mentioned that Acting Mayor Scanlon supports the designation for the church in his former South District.
Radel also made the claim that they have estimates that it would cost one million dollars for the demolition of any one of the original 16 churches which the diocese has earmarked for closing. So she threw out a total of 16 Million in potential demolition costs.
2 On Your Side reached out to a city spokesman who said, while buildings can vary, the city's estimate is actually $200,000 to $500,000 dollars to demolish a church.
