St. Pat’s expansion on hold
Published on April 24th, 2002
STONEHAM, MA – The Saint Patrick Church has fallen short of its fund-raising goal and postponed expansion for at least a year.
St. Pat’s needs to have around $2.5 million in cash and another $1.5 million in pledges, according to Archdiocesan guidelines, before going out to bid for construction on the estimated $5.1 million project. St. Pat’s has $3.8 million in outstanding pledges but only $1.8 million in cash.
“We are only going to move forward if we have the money,” Father William Schmidt said in November 2000.
Schmidt, the pastor, said he had hoped to break ground this spring, but the money isn’t there.
Schmidt is confident that his parish can raise the money, but all local parishes must refrain from fund-raising during an Archdiocesan fund-raising campaign, which begins this fall and runs until January 2003.
St. Pat’s is caught in a nasty, twofold Catch 22:
“We can’t build without more money, but we can’t raise more money because of the moratorium on fund-raising,” Schmidt said. “And people tend to give more when they know something’s really going to happen, but now we can’t go forward because we don’t have enough money.”
The planned expansion would almost triple the seating in the church, add a parish center and a gym/auditorium, connect the church with St. Pat’s parochial school, and make the entire facility handicap accessible.
Twenty-nine percent of the parish families have pledged support. The $1.8 million collected is earning five percent interest, all dedicated to the building project. Schmidt said he hopes pledges become cash in hand and other families give what they can when they can.
The sexual abuse scandal dominating discussions from Stoneham to Rome has threatened all Catholic Church fund-raising. In an April 19 letter to parishioners, Schmidt said donations to the building fund will go only to that purpose. St. Pat’s could have linked the building fund drive to the Archdiocesan campaign, but St. Pat’s parish advisory boards voted against the idea.
The building fund drive will commence in January 2003. Meanwhile the St. Pat’s building committee has hired a construction firm to produce a budget bid, not a real contract proposal but an industry estimate. This dollar figure gives the church a realistic price tag to shoot for. As Stonehamites know from the school building project, construction bids can vary widely from architects’ estimates.
“Waiting a year could mean escalation, but maybe there will be less construction work out there then,” Schmidt said. “You can’t predict the economy.”
St. Pat’s expansion has been delayed by the predictable and unpredictable of this world, but Father Bill Schmidt has faith that everything will work out.
Abuse forum
St. Pat’s will conduct an open forum on sexual abuse by priests on Thursday night, April 25, at 7:30 p.m. in the Monsignor Sexton Hall, upstairs at the church.
The meeting is open to all parishioners but closed to the media per request of the church.
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