St. Francis Parishioners Vote To Raze Old Church

by Karen Wilson, Record-Eagle Staff Writer with photo
Printed with permission of, Traverse City Record Eagle
July 1979

    Traverse City-- The 92-year-old St. Francis Church will soon be a memory. 

    Members of the parish voted during weekend services to tear down the religious landmark and use the lot for a playground.  Of the 739 members who voted, 594 were in favor of razing the building.

    A historical marker will be erected at Tenth and Cass streets, where the old church has stood abandoned since 1977 when a new church was constructed at Union and Thirteenth.

         "It's coming down," a disappointed Karen Marek said this morning.  Marek was a member of a committee created in June to study alternatives to demolition and possible funding sources.

   Marek said she and other committee members were in favor of partial restoration but that alternative was not cited on a fact sheet distributed to parishioners one week ago.

   All 18 members of the combined parish council and parish administrative commission recommended spending $22,500 to raze the building rather than $150,00 to restore it.

   "There just isn't the money there to support the old church, the new church and the school," said parish council president Richard Glazier.

   He said the turnout was good for the election with 739 of the 2,800 parishioners marking ballots.  "We were pretty sure this is the way it was going to go."

   Glazier said no timetable has been set for demolition but the ministry and parish council will meet later this week to determine what steps need to be taken.

   One of the first things to be done will be an auction of the church pews and windows.  Glazier said none of the religious articles in the old church would be for sale.  They will be divided among the chapels at St. Francis School, Immaculate Conception School, and a downstate shrine, he said.

   Once the building has been torn down and the debris cleared, the lot will be made into an unpaved playground for St. Francis Elementary School students.

   And somewhere on the lot, a $5,000 historical plaque will mark the spot where the old church stood for a century.

end

 

Grand Traverse Region by Brenda K. Wolfgram Moore
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20Dec2005