as the archdiocese announces it will likely be closing a substantial number of churches in the coming years, i think it will become important as a city to really figure out how to re-purpose these sorts of structures. converting smaller ones into homes works in some very select cases. but despite not being religious i hate to see houses of worship converted and gutted in that way. and how do you handle the cathedral size spaces, which is really the scale those in the roman catholic church exist on? these are some of the true architectural jewels and lynchpins in our city, but i fear we will lost more of these as time goes on. European citie have managed to preserves houses of worship of thousands of years. how do we do the same?

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/l...205-story.html

^ I think it depends on the size but churches are nice structures usually in some way. You could re use them in a variety of ways. There's a church in Manhattan at like 20th and 6th which is small but it's now a gym.

^ No, this really doesn't work. Churches (at least traditional ones) are extremely expensive buildings to maintain, just based on their configuration. Steep roofs, complex rooflines, heavy ornamentation, lots of points for potential failure. The key here is finding something that will bring in enough revenue to cover the maintenance cost and still be profitable. In the neighborhoods where many of these churches are located, that's not remotely possible. Why would a gym take on all that expense when they can build a tilt up concrete box on any number of large vacant lots?

TIF districts or preservation tax credits are only a partial solution - they can address the capital needs to renovate the buildings, but not the ongoing costs of maintenance.

You asked how European cities do it? Most of them aren't grappling with the First Amendment, and they shovel liberal amounts of taxpayer money to support their churches which they consider (rightfully) to be important civic spaces regardless of their religious purpose.

I will say that the Archdiocese is not remotely taking advantage of the potential for tourism dollars. Most European churches are open to the public every day, and either charge admission or collect donations. Chicago Catholic churches are generally only open limited hours on certain days of the week for religious services. There's also a small potential to use these as performance spaces, even for secular music as Fourth Presbyterian does.

I think you are thinking too large. I stated above that the church in Manhattan is small - I'm not talking about a cathedral here and you shouldn't think so based on what I said. Property and land is much more expensive in Manhattan than here. So a small church like that - what makes you think that Chicago in a high traffic/populated area can't pull off the same thing? Obviously it's not going to be large churches, but small ones like this size could definitely pull it off

http://www.davidbartongym.com/dbgyms/limelight/


Another thought and this thing above did it too - nightclub. Again, there's many uses for churches and not all churches are big. Some like the one above (and I've seen these in Chicago) are much more doable. On the side though there have been successful conversions in town to residential.

Fuck subsiding churches, what kind of backward moronic shit is that?

Tax those fuckers for their valuable property.

We have a few church conversions around here. They were modest sized (2-3 lot) churches and made nice multi family residential spaces. One from 2000 is right outside my back door. These were churches that opted into the landmark district and that changed the economics of demolition.
There was one in Logan Square that they wanted to turn into a trapeze school, I am not sure how that plan panned out, but it sounded like a frickin ingenious use to me.

People like you are why we are forced to slowly lose our churches to neglect and the elements while European cities can preserve their churches. (For the record, other religious structures like synagogues, etc are equally valuable civic spaces so this isn't a Christian thing exclusively)

Seriously though, would you have an objection if the city used TIF funds to purchase/renovate a closed church and then operated it as a community center? What if they leased it to small religious congregations on a first-come, first-served basis?

What if the city didn't purchase the church outright, but simply paid to renovate it and then retained control over event programming for 6 days a week for secular events and performances?

This is not a panacea. Residential conversions only work when demand in the neighborhood can support a certain level of construction cost. This won't work for a church structure in Garfield Park, Grand Crossing or Little Village.

You also totally kill the interior of the space, which is often just as significant as the outside.

I fully applaud the trapeze school idea. Obviously there are only so many trapeze schools to go around through.. :)

^ That sounds good on paper but it's using tax dollars to create wasteful community centers (how many community centers do we actually need?) when the main use will continue to be a religious congregation for a certain faith.

As most people know, the typical interior of a catholic church is hardly adaptable to other, non-faith-based uses. It's not like you're going to have a basketball court in there. It's a church. You've got crosses, the Virgin Mary, angels, all sorts of religious symbolism in there.

I find all of that beautiful, and for aesthetic and historic reasons would love to see them preserved. But using public tax dollars? I'm afraid that's not in America's DNA, like it or not.

Yeah, not right not in EGP or WGP, though I think actually it might attract some attention in Little Village. EGP and Little Village are two completely different places. EGP is depopulated and while LV is below its peak, there's still 80,000 people there and many properties there which aren't in disarray. One of the weirdest differences in the city is in certain areas crossing from Little Village to North Lawndale. It's kind of crazy - going from a decent looking area to a shitty one within 10 seconds.

The churches own billions.
Tax them to the ground.

Little Village is....ever so slightly.....starting to warm up.

I live in Pilsen and go through La Villita all the time. It's a pretty healthy, self-sufficient community, although it's a poor one. Both neighborhoods escaped the cycle of decay and arson that happened in the 1960s and experienced a slower racial transition in the 70s-80s as the old Czechs and Poles died or moved to the burbs.

That doesn't mean it will support expensive church-to-condo conversions, though. They couldn't even do it to St. Boniface in a pretty hot area of East Village (the building is still standing for now, although it's only a matter of time until a homeless dude breaks in and accidentally burns the place down).

That's why I'm seriously worried about St. Adalbert... in addition to having a declining congregation, it's also in bad shape physically. Fortunately it sits on a large lot, so the right redevelopment could include the saving of the church for some community use surrounded by dense TOD housing.

I didn't suggest it as a panacea. I only hoped to illustrate that these conversions are being done here and that costs that seem insurmountable in the face of dwindling congregations, can be dealt with by more creative economics.

I suspect the separation of church and state precludes funding with tax dollars, but I don't think it keeps us from pressuring the church to seek reuse before they are simply labeled "old and in the way."

Very slightly, but I'd more like to see the residents of the community get wealthier and support it that way and not by gentrifying it. Anyway, I think LV gets a lot of crap unnecessarily from the safety standpoint. There are no doubt gangs there and crap going on, but oddly enough the crime rates aren't much different than an area like Lakeview. There are tons of families in the neighborhood and if you walk around 26th street on a Saturday afternoon, you wouldn't really think of it as some neighborhood full of gangs. Of course, nighttime is different or can be. There are many properties there which have been kept up well - you don't have to have tons of money to keep your property from falling into disarray (I'm talking about looking like complete crap). Go along Kedzie from 26th and north. Once you get a few hundred feet north of the Pink Line stop, it changes rapidly.

Zurich America - Schaumberg
 

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It's a shame the Zurich American HQ wasn't built in Fulton market or Goose Island. It really is a neat building.

Speaking of old buildings being converted. This old mansion on Addison near Southport is being converted to 10 units. Written about in October 2014. Received a permit the other day

http://chicago.curbed.com/archives/2...-side-home.php

^ I know everybody hates the burbs, but they exist and we at least need to have some interesting design out there as well. This thing makes quite a statement from the highway.

We can't let Dallas have all the fun.

^ How a property looks on the outside often says very little about interior conditions, in my experience of doing a lot of property walk-throughs in Chicago.

Reality is, especially in many of the Latino neighborhoods, you've got pretty rough conditions on the inside. For the most part, whatever eventually undermines Chicago's building stock will be from the inside out, not the outside in, especially the brick structures which were built like tanks over a century ago.

But damaged, leaky, exposed plumbing, settling joists, cracking beams, 100 year old electrical wiring, peeling plaster, leaking roofs over time take their toll.

The only hope for Little Village's building stock, long term, is gentrification. Gentrification will save Chicago, the lack of it will lead to a loss of generations of building stock.