Church's fate up in air

PROVO — A short deadline — tonight at 7 p.m. — has emerged for preservationists who want to save Provo's St. Francis of Assisi Roman Catholic Church, 172 N. 500 West.

The Provo City Council will listen to the public before it decides whether to remove the 84-year-old abandoned church from the city's landmarks register.

If the council votes to strip the building of its landmark status, it would clear the way for the Catholic Church to sell the building to developers who likely would bulldoze it.

"We're worried the clock is ticking too fast on this," said Kurt Peterson, part of a group that includes historic preservationists and central Provo activists who met last week to consider creating a fund-raising charity.

Historic preservationists, including the Utah Heritage Foundation, want to save the building because of its Spanish mission-style architecture, but no one has stepped forward to pay for the renovations necessary to make it safe.

Estimates for the work range from $700,000 to $1 million.

The Catholic Church wants to sell the property to fund construction of a new, larger church in Orem. Church leaders say would-be buyers have offered as much as $1.2 million — if the church is removed from the landmarks register.

The St. Francis of Assisi parish left the building behind in 2000 and moved into a new gymnasium built in Orem on the site where it wants to add a 1,200-seat worship sanctuary. The parish has been holding crowded Masses in the gym, with parishioners sitting in folding chairs and kneeling on the hard floor.

The empty, deteriorating church in Provo is the city's only Spanish mission-style building.

There are more than a half-dozen examples of the architecture elsewhere in Utah, and city staff has recommended that the building be removed from the register.

The Provo Landmarks Commission rejected the recommendation on Jan. 17 in a 4-1 vote.

Church leaders hope the City Council will overrule the landmarks commission. The Rev. Michael Sciumbato will address the council, and the parish newsletter this weekend urged other parishioners to attend the meeting.

There is a precedent for the council to reject the landmarks commission's will. In 2002, the council removed Amanda Knight Hall at Brigham Young University from the register after the landmarks commission voted against doing so.