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GORDON DANIELS

St. Mary's Catholic Church, Elm Street, Northampton

NORTHAMPTON - Building Commissioner Anthony L. Patillo said Wednesday the main roof and northwest steeple of a downtown church do not pose a public safety hazard, despite a report recommending extensive and costly repairs to those structures.

However, the building commissioner did say that interior repairs to St. Mary of the Assumption Church will be required before he allows any future use of the building. Those problem areas include split floor joists and loose plaster caused by water damage.

"Clearly there are issues they have to address on the interior," Patillo said.

Patillo's decision comes after he demanded a report Tuesday from the Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield which assesses the structural needs of the church. In doing so, he wanted to evaluate whether the structural conditions of the church pose a risk to public safety.

See two reports on the condition of St. Mary of the Assumption:
--The Diocese of Springfield's report
--A report from a parishioners' independent consultant

The diocese and a St. Mary's parish committee remain at odds over the extent and cost of repairs needed at the church. Conflicting information surfaced again in recent days when scaffolding came down for a roofing company to replace and repair loose slate shingles on the northwest spire.

The diocese closed St. Mary's church and others in early January as part of consolidation of parishes. A major factor in that decision were recommendations outlined in a 32-page report by Engineering Design Associates, Inc. of West Springfield, which determined repairs at St. Mary's church would cost the diocese about $1.3 million.

It was that firm's report that Patillo requested and reviewed. The Gazette obtained a copy of the report.

The engineering firm recommended replacing the original slate roof of the church at a cost of $546,000 and rebuilding and reroofing the northwest steeple at a cost of nearly $200,000.

"I think what they were insinuating is that it is at the end of its life cycle," said Patillo, of the report's recommendation to the replace the church's original slate roof. "This is a decision the church is going to have to make for the future use of that building."

Other repairs recommended in the diocese's report include rebuilding a chimney and the church's front stairs, re-pointing brick, replacing a lower slate roof and reinforcing split floor beams.

"Any one of the items by itself would be feasible; however, in order to accomplish all of the immediately necessary repairs, even if the money were available, the church would have to be closed down while the work was undertaken," Bishop Timothy A. McDonnell wrote in a Dec. 17 letter to former St. Mary's Rev. William Hamilton.

A group of St. Mary's parishioners hired their own engineering consultant last year, L.P. Consultants, LLC of Enfield, Conn., which provided some overlapping though different assessments of the church's needs, but not cost estimates.

Using that report, these parishioners contend that many of the repairs recommended in the diocese's report are inflated and not immediately necessary. In addition, they say the repairs that are necessary could have been covered by the available monetary assets of St. Mary's parish.

Appeal to Vatican

The parishioners have appealed to the Vatican in an attempt to get the diocese's decision to close St. Mary's reversed. Thomas McGee of Hadley and a parish committee member, said the group has a "right and a duty" to file the appeal because it believes the diocese acted on information that was "erroneous and specious," when closing St. Mary's in favor of keeping open Sacred Heart Church on King Street.

In addition to the church repairs, the diocese cited parking and handicapped accessibility concerns from area Catholics as the reasons it chose to close St. Mary's church, which was built in 1881 and is the oldest Catholic church in Hampshire County.

"It's hard for me to reconcile what Springfield has done here," said Edward J. McMahon, a Northampton lawyer who served on the parish committee and is helping with the appeal. "I believe we could have fixed St. Mary's for $150,000 or less."

"I can't make any sense out of it; nobody can make any sense out of it," he said.

In his December letter to Rev. Hamilton, Bishop McDonnell explained that the diocese had a building assessment report prepared for St. Mary's, Sacred Heart and St. John Cantius churches last October.

In reversing its earlier decision to keep St. Mary's Church open, McDonnell wrote that "my determination after having read all three reports was to name Sacred Heart the parish church. The repair work that is required in Sacred Heart can be staged over a number of years and does not require immediate action."

The diocese this week said it stands by its previous review and original estimates for physical improvements needed at the church.

"This is a fair analysis of the building," Mark Dupont, a diocese spokesman said.

He noted that the building analysis of Sacred Heart did not identify any similar structural issues as those found at St. Mary's Church, "though there are no doubt the normal ongoing issues that would exist in any building," he wrote in an email to the Gazette.

He added that Sacred Heart Church "provided far more options for making the changes necessary for any improvements that might be foreseen for the primary place of worship for the Northampton Catholic community."

Although the McDonnell used the phrase "immediate necessary repairs" in his December letter to Hamilton regarding work needed at St. Mary's, Dupont said Tuesday that the three church building reports were intended to provide the diocese with a "side-by-side comparison" of their structural conditions and the costs of future repairs.

As for the upcoming repairs to the slate shingles on St. Mary's northwest steeple, Dupont said: "I don't think in our discussions we ever said these were urgent needs or immediate. I think people jumped to that conclusion."

Dan Crowley can be reached at dcrowley@gazettenet.com.