Ace Rimmer
12-11-2009, 10:33 AM
Fight to preserve historic St. Nicholas Church fails (http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/cityregion/s_591372.html)
The battle to preserve the historic St. Nicholas church was all for naught.
The Croatian group that hoped to spare the 107-year-old building from a PennDOT wrecking ball and turn it into an ethnic museum has failed to reach an agreement with the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh.
"We made an offer to the diocese, and they rejected it," said Marian Vujevich, a spokesman for the Croatian American Cultural and Economic Alliance. "So, we're not interested in it anymore. I don't know what's going to become of the church."
What some claim was the first Croatian Catholic church in the United States is closed and rapidly deteriorating without a prospective buyer. Weeds grow 6 feet high in places, and trees sprout from the cracks in the parking lot. The hillside behind the church is giving way, and religious murals that once covered the inside of its domed ceiling are painted over.
"We still hope that the problems for the Croatian group and the diocese could be resolved," said Arthur Ziegler, president of the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation. "But, if not, we know of no other solution at this time."
PennDOT no longer wants to buy the land from the diocese and intends to start its $130 million reconstruction of Route 28 in fall 2009 on a path that squeezes past the church's front door.
PennDOT proposed the project nearly 15 years ago to transform the traffic-choked stretch between the North Side and Millvale into a modern highway. Under PennDOT's first designs, which called for buying and demolishing the church, work would have been completed by mid-2009.
Parishioners and preservationists demanded that PennDOT spare St. Nicholas, and the highway agency eventually relented. After scrapping its initial plans about seven years ago and developing a design that wrapped the rebuilt highway around the church, construction was delayed. Now, work is not expected to be completed until late 2012.
The project includes widening the road to build shoulders alongside driving lanes and room to install a safety barrier between opposing directions of travel. It will eliminate traffic signals at the 31st and 40th street bridges.
The changes required PennDOT to buy a strip of homes and businesses and St. Nicholas to make way for the road.
The diocese, which favored the initial plan to demolish the aging building, closed the church in 2004 and looked for buyers.
A potential deal with New York developer Follieri Group collapsed in 2007 after concerns were raised about Follieri's business dealings. Last month, Raffaello Follieri pleaded guilty to fraud charges linked to his business' attempts to buy U.S. properties owned by the Catholic Church.
That's when talks with the Croatian American Cultural and Economic Alliance started. The group represents the region's Croatian community, which wanted to turn the building into a national shrine honoring Croatian immigrants.
The Croatian group offered $44,400 plus 10 percent of any income generated by the property, Vujevich said. The St. Nicholas Croatian Catholic Parish, based in Millvale, rejected the offer and wanted $395,000, he said.
The Rev. Ron Lengwin, a diocesan spokesman, referred questions to the parish. Messages left there for the Rev. Dan Whalen were not returned.
PennDOT is buying other properties along the highway.
"As buildings are acquired, they will be removed," said PennDOT spokesman Jim Struzzi. "We are still in negotiations with several properties along this area of Route 28."
Robert Sladack, a Reserve resident who speaks on behalf of several property owners, said most want to sell and move. Sladack is a leader of the Croatian group.
Raymond Hunt owns land near the 31st Street Bridge and leases it to billboard owners to generate the only income for his elderly mother.
"They didn't want to give us what the income was from the property," he said. "So, I just handed it to an attorney. We weren't asking for an amount of money way out of proportion."
If negotiations fail, the agency will seek to obtain the properties through eminent domain, Struzzi said.
"You hope you can settle it before eminent domain kicks in," he said.
Religious objects removed from historic St. Nicholas Church (http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07079/770918-53.stm)
A crew has removed religious objects from the interior of St. Nicholas Church, North Side, a landmark building on Route 28 caught in 15 years of wrangling between the parish that no longer uses it, former parishioners who want to save it, the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh and the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation.
On Friday the altar, statues and other religious objects were removed, and religious murals were painted over in preparation for a pending sale to the New York-based redeveloper of church properties, The Follieri Group.
Matt Freed, Post-Gazette
St. Nicholas Church, located just a few feet off Route 28, has been closed since 2004. The church building, shown in this 1999 photo, will remain intact under the latest Route 28 construction plan.
Click photo for larger image.
Although that deal has not yet closed, a decision was made to remove the objects now because there had been a break-in at the unused rectory, said the Rev. Ronald Lengwin, spokesman for the diocese.
"We feel that it is necessary to prepare the building for sale and to safeguard those items. We met with the new pastor down there recently and determined what should be removed," he said.
The action was devastating to Susan Petrick, secretary of the Preserve Croatian Heritage Foundation, which had unsuccessfully tried to arrange the building's purchase as a shrine.
Although church authorities had told her that religious objects would be removed, "I didn't think they were going to take it down to an empty shell," she said.
The church sits on a death trap stretch of Route 28 that PennDOT has long wanted to widen. In 1994 the parish merged with another Croatian parish in nearby Millvale, also named St. Nicholas. While leaders of the merged parish and the diocese wanted to sell to PennDOT, people from the North Side church had it declared a historic landmark to protect its exterior. PennDOT developed a plan to widen Route 28 with the church intact. The parish continued to use the building until 2004, when a broken boiler led to its closure.
The Follieri Group is run by Catholics who specialize in renovating churches for purposes that are acceptable to the church, including affordable housing. Father Lengwin said the group has not indicated how it intends to use the St. Nicholas property.
However, canon law requires that all religious objects be removed from churches that are being put to secular use. The diocese has been aggressive about that since a church was sold intact in the 1990s for what is now The Church Brew Works in Lawrenceville.
"We've learned from that experience, and are very vigilant," said the Rev. Lawrence DiNardo, director of the diocesan Department for Canon and Civil Law Services.
The altar must always be removed. If a non-Catholic group plans to use it as a church, many of the items can be left if the buyer plans to use them. But if the building will be used for secular purposes, every religious object must go, he said.
"We would take out the candlesticks and the tabernacle, statues, vestments, chalices, anything that would have been used for sacred purposes. If there are any murals that we can't take down, they would be painted over. Basically we are selling them a building that has no religious things in it," he said.
It will be up to St. Nicholas parish to decide what to do with the religious items, Father Lengwin said.
"We redistribute them to parishes that need them. The parish itself will determine which of those items they want to incorporate in their [Millvale] building," he said.
Some ethnic parishes have sent items from closed churches overseas to parishes in their motherland that are still struggling to emerge from rebuilding after communism. "But that has not been decided yet. It will be up to the parish," he said.
The battle to preserve the historic St. Nicholas church was all for naught.
The Croatian group that hoped to spare the 107-year-old building from a PennDOT wrecking ball and turn it into an ethnic museum has failed to reach an agreement with the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh.
"We made an offer to the diocese, and they rejected it," said Marian Vujevich, a spokesman for the Croatian American Cultural and Economic Alliance. "So, we're not interested in it anymore. I don't know what's going to become of the church."
What some claim was the first Croatian Catholic church in the United States is closed and rapidly deteriorating without a prospective buyer. Weeds grow 6 feet high in places, and trees sprout from the cracks in the parking lot. The hillside behind the church is giving way, and religious murals that once covered the inside of its domed ceiling are painted over.
"We still hope that the problems for the Croatian group and the diocese could be resolved," said Arthur Ziegler, president of the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation. "But, if not, we know of no other solution at this time."
PennDOT no longer wants to buy the land from the diocese and intends to start its $130 million reconstruction of Route 28 in fall 2009 on a path that squeezes past the church's front door.
PennDOT proposed the project nearly 15 years ago to transform the traffic-choked stretch between the North Side and Millvale into a modern highway. Under PennDOT's first designs, which called for buying and demolishing the church, work would have been completed by mid-2009.
Parishioners and preservationists demanded that PennDOT spare St. Nicholas, and the highway agency eventually relented. After scrapping its initial plans about seven years ago and developing a design that wrapped the rebuilt highway around the church, construction was delayed. Now, work is not expected to be completed until late 2012.
The project includes widening the road to build shoulders alongside driving lanes and room to install a safety barrier between opposing directions of travel. It will eliminate traffic signals at the 31st and 40th street bridges.
The changes required PennDOT to buy a strip of homes and businesses and St. Nicholas to make way for the road.
The diocese, which favored the initial plan to demolish the aging building, closed the church in 2004 and looked for buyers.
A potential deal with New York developer Follieri Group collapsed in 2007 after concerns were raised about Follieri's business dealings. Last month, Raffaello Follieri pleaded guilty to fraud charges linked to his business' attempts to buy U.S. properties owned by the Catholic Church.
That's when talks with the Croatian American Cultural and Economic Alliance started. The group represents the region's Croatian community, which wanted to turn the building into a national shrine honoring Croatian immigrants.
The Croatian group offered $44,400 plus 10 percent of any income generated by the property, Vujevich said. The St. Nicholas Croatian Catholic Parish, based in Millvale, rejected the offer and wanted $395,000, he said.
The Rev. Ron Lengwin, a diocesan spokesman, referred questions to the parish. Messages left there for the Rev. Dan Whalen were not returned.
PennDOT is buying other properties along the highway.
"As buildings are acquired, they will be removed," said PennDOT spokesman Jim Struzzi. "We are still in negotiations with several properties along this area of Route 28."
Robert Sladack, a Reserve resident who speaks on behalf of several property owners, said most want to sell and move. Sladack is a leader of the Croatian group.
Raymond Hunt owns land near the 31st Street Bridge and leases it to billboard owners to generate the only income for his elderly mother.
"They didn't want to give us what the income was from the property," he said. "So, I just handed it to an attorney. We weren't asking for an amount of money way out of proportion."
If negotiations fail, the agency will seek to obtain the properties through eminent domain, Struzzi said.
"You hope you can settle it before eminent domain kicks in," he said.
Religious objects removed from historic St. Nicholas Church (http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07079/770918-53.stm)
A crew has removed religious objects from the interior of St. Nicholas Church, North Side, a landmark building on Route 28 caught in 15 years of wrangling between the parish that no longer uses it, former parishioners who want to save it, the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh and the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation.
On Friday the altar, statues and other religious objects were removed, and religious murals were painted over in preparation for a pending sale to the New York-based redeveloper of church properties, The Follieri Group.
Matt Freed, Post-Gazette
St. Nicholas Church, located just a few feet off Route 28, has been closed since 2004. The church building, shown in this 1999 photo, will remain intact under the latest Route 28 construction plan.
Click photo for larger image.
Although that deal has not yet closed, a decision was made to remove the objects now because there had been a break-in at the unused rectory, said the Rev. Ronald Lengwin, spokesman for the diocese.
"We feel that it is necessary to prepare the building for sale and to safeguard those items. We met with the new pastor down there recently and determined what should be removed," he said.
The action was devastating to Susan Petrick, secretary of the Preserve Croatian Heritage Foundation, which had unsuccessfully tried to arrange the building's purchase as a shrine.
Although church authorities had told her that religious objects would be removed, "I didn't think they were going to take it down to an empty shell," she said.
The church sits on a death trap stretch of Route 28 that PennDOT has long wanted to widen. In 1994 the parish merged with another Croatian parish in nearby Millvale, also named St. Nicholas. While leaders of the merged parish and the diocese wanted to sell to PennDOT, people from the North Side church had it declared a historic landmark to protect its exterior. PennDOT developed a plan to widen Route 28 with the church intact. The parish continued to use the building until 2004, when a broken boiler led to its closure.
The Follieri Group is run by Catholics who specialize in renovating churches for purposes that are acceptable to the church, including affordable housing. Father Lengwin said the group has not indicated how it intends to use the St. Nicholas property.
However, canon law requires that all religious objects be removed from churches that are being put to secular use. The diocese has been aggressive about that since a church was sold intact in the 1990s for what is now The Church Brew Works in Lawrenceville.
"We've learned from that experience, and are very vigilant," said the Rev. Lawrence DiNardo, director of the diocesan Department for Canon and Civil Law Services.
The altar must always be removed. If a non-Catholic group plans to use it as a church, many of the items can be left if the buyer plans to use them. But if the building will be used for secular purposes, every religious object must go, he said.
"We would take out the candlesticks and the tabernacle, statues, vestments, chalices, anything that would have been used for sacred purposes. If there are any murals that we can't take down, they would be painted over. Basically we are selling them a building that has no religious things in it," he said.
It will be up to St. Nicholas parish to decide what to do with the religious items, Father Lengwin said.
"We redistribute them to parishes that need them. The parish itself will determine which of those items they want to incorporate in their [Millvale] building," he said.
Some ethnic parishes have sent items from closed churches overseas to parishes in their motherland that are still struggling to emerge from rebuilding after communism. "But that has not been decided yet. It will be up to the parish," he said.