With stakeholders convening focus groups this month, and with $75,000 recently secured for building stabilization, plans for St. Anthony Church in Toledo are inching forward.
“I am feeling guardedly optimistic that we are going to see real movement around St. Anthony’s over the course of the year,” said Lindsay Webb, a board member of the Lucas County Land Bank and co-chair of the committee overseeing the church’s redevelopment.
Little has changed at the church since a last-minute negotiation between the Catholic Diocese of Toledo and the Lucas County Land Bank saved it from a scheduled demolition last summer.
Its towering steeple continues to cast a familiar shadow over in the intersection of Nebraska and Junction avenues, where it first welcomed parishioners in 1894. Inside the cavernous former sanctuary, which was stripped of pews and other sacred items before the land bank took ownership, natural light filters over heaps of errant kneelers and other debris.
Images of saints in Polish murals and windows hint at one-time grandeur.
VIDEO: Toledo’s St. Anthony Church
While stakeholders have been discussing the future of the church since the summer, they are now anticipating the first visible signs of forward motion after city and county agencies allocated funds toward the project last month.
The Toledo City Council and Lucas County Board of Commissioners are each contributing $20,000. The Toledo-Lucas County Port Authority is contributing $35,000.
That collective $75,000 will be put toward the stabilization of the building. To completely stabilize the structure is expected to run $100,000 to $125,000, said David Mann, president and CEO of the Lucas County Land Bank.
The church has stood vacant since 2005, when the diocese shuttered the parish as part of a wave of church closures and consolidations. In announcing plans to demolish the building in December, 2017, the diocese cited recent signs of deterioration in the building.
Some of these signs are evident on the exterior of the building, as with instances of water and brick damage around faulty downspouts. Mr. Mann said immediate stabilization priorities are brick deterioration, gutters and downspouts, and work on the roof and steeple, he said. The roof, but not the steeple, was last replaced in the mid-2000s.
“We’ll start engaging with contractors in the spring,” Mr. Mann said. He anticipates that work “will start to commence in a visible way in April or May.”
Separately, stakeholders expect to begin convening focus groups on reuse of the facility this month. The redevelopment committee is divided into three subgroups focused on how best to reuse the building, how to maintain it, and how to finance it all.
Focus groups will bring together community members within and beyond the immediate neighborhood, Tiffany Preston, a subcommittee co-chair, said. Organizers hope to reach a diverse slice of the community, including business, faith, youth, and social service.
“It’s going to be focused on the reuse of St. Anthony’s, really getting people’s input,” Ms. Preston said. “What does that look like from your vantage point?”
Any ideas for reuse that come out of these conversations will then be considered for feasibility. The New York-based Local Initiative Support Corporation is expected to assist with technical expertise, said Ms. Webb, who is also county treasurer.
Stakeholders do not have a timeline in place for the ultimate redevelopment of the church.
Plans for St. Anthony are expected to dovetail with the Junction Neighborhood Master Plan, a recently approved document through the Junction Coalition that maps out a “cohesive vision for the future of the Junction Neighborhood,” as the area around St. Anthony is known. The neighborhood was once predominantly Polish and is now predominantly African American.
The Junction Coalition supports and is involved in talks about the future of the church, Director Alicia Smith said.
“The Junction Master Plan complements that, because it talks about the economic development of the community,” she said. “Those two should work hand in hand.”
First Published February 12, 2019, 1:33 a.m.
