BUFFALO, N.Y. — The Buffalo Catholic Diocese has announced plans that could involve the closure of up to 30 of its churches, including 14 in the city of Buffalo.
This has local preservationists worried enough to come up with a new idea to save the historic structures.
They’ve even come up with a name for their plan: "Save our Sacred Sites".
There are examples throughout the city of old churches not only being repurposed by other congregations but also being converted into everything from housing to office space, even art galleries and recording studios.
However, there are also numerous examples of churches that have closed and which decades later continue to rot, to the point of condemnation, where either nothing has been done or where the best-laid plans have been come cost-prohibitive and have fallen through.
With so many churches slated to possibly close at the same time, preservations have hit upon an idea to prevent this from happening.
“We’re going to try to get local landmark status for each church that is at risk of closure by the Catholic Diocese,” said Bernice Radle, Executive Director of Buffalo Niagara Preservation.
Gaining landmark status would require the church to keep the properties up until they are sold, according to Radle.
“They should keep the utilities on they should keep the building secure. However, if they don't do that that's when we can step in and put pressure on them to do the right thing," she said.
It would also prevent anyone who buys the buildings from demolishing them, altering them significantly, or stripping them of fixtures and the like.
"A local landmark status will provide protection against that," Radle said.
Preservationists have no authority to designate something as a local landmark. The ultimate authority for that rests with the Buffalo Common Council and Fillmore District Councilmember Mitch Nowakowski is supporting the effort
According to Nowakowski, while landmark designation can dissuade certain developers from repurposing buildings "because it adds a layer of preservation protection, which sometimes leads to developers not wanting to adhere to those standards," he and Radle also insist it could attract others.
“When you do local landmark status, you can then use it as a means to open the doors to other grant funding available,” said Radle. “Developers or community members that want to buy the churches will understand if they have access to historic tax credits, which almost every single historic building you see renovated is using."
Added Nowakowski, “Developers have been able to use historic tax credits to do adaptive reuse in churches for a very long time. Our local development community can and should be sophisticated enough to access these credits to leverage the dollars to do appropriate adaptive reuse to these historic structures.”
When it comes to catholic churches in particular, however, some factors can limit their re-development largely due to restrictive covenants which the diocese places within purchase agreements, and which anyone buying them from the diocese agrees to follow.
"There's only a certain amount of uses that you can put in an old church and the main one is either retail or housing," said Nowakowski.
According to Radle, the covenants ban the use of former churches as restaurants, bars, strip clubs, or facilities involved with astrology or fortune-telling among a host of other prohibited activities.
“We would like to really like to encourage the diocese to really rethink some of those standards," said Radle. “I understand some of those restrictions but if they can remove some of these covenants that are maybe a little more in line with what the community wants, such as a restaurant, that way we can have more opportunities for success in these buildings."
The effort to get the buildings designated as local landmarks is not only unique but it also takes time and money.
Preservation Buffalo Niagara is short on both, explaining that the process can cost $2,500 just to get an application started and take several months to complete.
“So we are asking for donations to contribute to this effort and all of that can be found in Preservation Buffalo Niagara's website," Radle said.