Buffalo finds success in new life for old churches

BUFFALO, N.Y. (RNS) Amid the closings of Catholic churches across the Northeast and Midwest, local officials — vexed by visions of vacant buildings in struggling neighborhoods — might want to take a look at what’s happening in Buffalo. Despite a weak real estate market, the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo has found surprising success in selling […]

BUFFALO, N.Y. (RNS) Amid the closings of Catholic churches across the Northeast and Midwest, local officials — vexed by visions of vacant buildings in struggling neighborhoods — might want to take a look at what’s happening in Buffalo.

Despite a weak real estate market, the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo has found surprising success in selling its closed churches — often hulking, high-maintenance, heat-draining structures. To date, the diocese has sold 38 of the 77 church properties it closed during a three-year downsizing plan that began in 2005.


“Despite the economy, we have not seen a drop-off” in interest, said diocese spokesman Kevin Keenan. “These are unique properties and there has been a significant number of people interested in them.”

Some churches were turned into private residences. Others were sold to various religious groups. “We’ve sold to Muslims; we’ve sold to Buddhists,” said Keenan.

Two churches have been turned into museums, including the Buffalo Religious Art Center, which aims to rescue sacred art from the area’s shuttered parishes. Another is now a recording studio for Christian music.

The shuttered, century-old St. Gerard Catholic Church is about to be disassembled stone by stone, pew by pew and moved 900 miles to suburban Atlanta, where it will be reconstructed as Mary Our Queen Catholic Church.

The idea came from Mary Our Queen’s pastor, the Rev. David Dye, whose growing congregation is in need of a bigger church.

Dye estimated that to duplicate a classic stone structure like St. Gerard, using the same materials, including its 50 stained-glass windows, would cost $40 million.

But moving St. Gerard to his parish will cost about $15 million.

“St. Gerard’s has far more beautiful space and features than anything we could create with modern materials,” Dye, who likens the plan to an organ transplant, said in an e-mail to The Plain Dealer.


The work is scheduled to begin this year and take up to two years.

The sale price on St. Gerard has not yet been set, said Keenan, but it will be sold at market value, just like the rest of the churches whose sales have generated more than $4 million.

“None of that money goes to the diocese,” he said. “It goes to the new parishes.”

Toward the end of the closing process, Buffalo Bishop Edward Kmiec established a “Church Property Re-use Committee,” made up of developers, real estate brokers, architects and preservationists, to come up with ways to market the properties. “Our bishop is big on collaboration,” said Keenan.

The diocese kept some of the properties for various uses and still has 20 churches for sale.

“We have sales pending on a number of them,” said Keenan, noting that deed restrictions prohibit buyers from using the former churches for abortion clinics, strip clubs, fortune-telling establishments, saloons or casinos.

Anthony Brancatelli, a member of Cleveland’s City Council whose ward is losing three of eight Catholic churches, welcomed the news of Buffalo’s success.


“This sounds like a good opportunity to latch onto what Buffalo’s doing,” he said. “It’s positive to hear how other cities are taking initiatives to creatively market these buildings. It sounds like Buffalo is trying to engage the community and to solicit input. And that’s important.”

In many ways, both represent the type of mid-sized diocese that has struggled against decline in recent years. In fact, the two dioceses share much in common: they were both incorporated on the same day, in 1874; and both are roughly similarly sized, both in geography, the number of priests and parishioners in the pews.

Cleveland has closed more than 30 churches so far and will continue shuttering properties through May. To date, it has sold only one church, which was purchased for $200,000 in December by the House of Healing and Outreach, a nondenominational church.

In Cleveland, the diocese has taken responsibility for selling, storing or donating sacred artifacts from closed churches, some of which were closed outright and not merged with other parishes.

In Buffalo, where all the closings were done through mergers, sacred items in closed churches are the responsibility of the newly formed parishes.

“The diocese is not making any sales or donations,” said Keenan. “It’s up to the pastor and parish council. One church donated stained-glass windows to a mission in Nicaragua.”


Both dioceses cite the same reasons for downsizing — fewer people in the pews, less collection-basket cash and a shortage of priests.

“Our bishop didn’t want our priests to be circuit riders,” said Keenan. “And, as the bishop has said, `There is new growth when you prune back some of the branches.”‘

(Michael O’Malley writes for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland.)

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