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Sale of St. John's Lutheran makes way for new houses |
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ON WISCONSIN : JS ONLINE : NEWS : OZ/WASH :By LAWRENCE SUSSMAN
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St.
John's Lutheran Church
"We hope to model the development after the Brewers Hill development, where the new buildings will match the older buildings around it," one of the investors, Bill Fazio of Milwaukee, said Monday.
Brewers Hill is a neighborhood just north of downtown Milwaukee.
St. John's Lutheran has accepted the offer, the Rev. John E. Klieve said Monday. The sale is expected to be completed by late July.
The church still conducts its services in the imposing Romanesque building with a cream city brick exterior at 403 W. Foster St. The church parcel is about 35,000 square feet, or about four-fifths of an acre.
But many of the church's operations, including its academy school, have been moved to the former headquarters and research and development center in the old Freeman Chemical building, 217 Freeman Drive.
Last September, the academy school opened in the southern end of the building.
"Within the congregation, the sale has been extremely peaceful,"
Klieve said. "But there are people who have great emotional
attachments to the building."
Church officials did not think that the church building could have been expanded on the Foster St. site, Klieve said. The parcel could not be expanded, and the building would need extensive remodeling to be made accessible to people with disabilities. The building also would need to be outfitted with automatic fire sprinklers.
Fazio said the investors considered rehabbing the church, but "because it is built like a fortress, it wouldn't be easy to remodel. It reminds me of the old fallout shelters."
Fazio and his brother, Joe, a former Cedarburg alderman, are two of the four investors. Bill Fazio declined to name the other two.
City officials probably will not oppose razing the church building, Randy Tetzlaff, the Port Washington director of planning and development, said Monday.
"We were encouraging them to find somebody to buy the existing property and put it back on the tax rolls and put in something that would be compatible with the existing neighborhood," Tetzlaff said. "The church, itself, is kind of a white elephant anyway."
By the end of this summer, the congregation hopes to move into its new temporary sanctuary at the north end of the former Freeman building, Klieve said.
"The temporary sanctuary would by no means look temporary," he said, "but it won't be as grand as the future sanctuary."
The church anticipates building a new sanctuary, west of the existing Freeman building, in five to eight years, Klieve said.
Plans also call for building a day care center on the lower level of the temporary sanctuary.