Historic church temporarily spared

PROVO — The Provo City Council issued a stay of execution late Tuesday night for the city's historic Catholic Church building, giving preservationists 54 days to come up with $1.2 million.

If they fail, it is clear the council will vote April 3 to remove the building from the city's landmarks register, clearing the way for the property at 172 N. 500 West to be sold and the building torn down.

The sale will help fund a new church for the financially strapped St. Francis of Assisi Parish in Orem.

Parishioners did not like the council's decision, and one said the delay could scare off the buyer who signed a contract to pay $1.2 million for the property on the condition the city removed it from the register.

The contract's option doesn't expire until April, but Tommy George isn't sure the developer will sit on a back burner.

"It may be dead now," George said of the deal. "They're going to sit around and wait two months to see if we get a better offer? What kind of baloney is that?"

The stay came at the 11th hour, literally and figuratively. Preservationists expected to lose the council vote — and lose the building to bulldozers — before Tuesday's public hearing stretched over most of three hours until it was nearly 11 p.m.

Council members voted 4-3 to postpone the decision on removing the church from the register, but at least one, Cynthia Dayton, told the parish's pastor, The Rev. Michael Sciumbato, after the meeting that she'll switch sides April 3 and vote for removal if a group of preservationists and area neighbors fail to raise the money to buy it.

Dayton, Cindy Richards, Cindy Clark and Midge Johnson voted for the postponement. Barbara Sandstrom, George Stewart and Steve Turley voted against it.

The parish, repeatedly described as poor by parishioners, would shoulder the cost of the council-imposed delay if construction-material costs rise. A reprieve for the building also means more discomfort for parishioners, who must continue to hold mass and other sacred events in a gymnasium in Orem adjacent to the land where they dream of building the new church.

"We have our babies blessed and baptized in a gymnasium," parishioner Suzanne Judd told the council. "We have fathers walking their daughters down the aisle for their weddings in a gymnasium. We hold our funerals there, too. It hurts me you don't care about my grandbabies being blessed or baptized in a gymnasium instead of a chapel or church."