TROY – The deteriorating 151-year-old St. Jean Baptiste Church constructing, a earlier cornerstone for the French and French-Canadian neighborhood, seems headed for demolition 50 years after it shut down.
Town planning fee is reviewing an software by James Kennedy of Greenpoint in Brooklyn, an actual property developer, to raze the previous church at 230 Second St. that was devoted in 1869.
“I don’t wish to demolish it. I attempted every thing to avoid wasting the constructing,” Kennedy mentioned Wednesday.
Kennedy has been working with metropolis code enforcement and engineering on the constructing. The demolition software to the town states, “Most not too long ago there was a priority for public security which has led to the proprietor continuing with demolition.”
The planning fee will contemplate Kennedy’s software when it meets Thursday.
Makes use of for the constructing that have been explored included a health heart and an ag-tech operation to show the construction right into a develop facility, mentioned Kennedy about alternate options that have been thought-about after he bought the property from the town.
Previous to the $125,000 buy, Kennedy’s agency Murphy Kennedy Group proposed changing the church with a $2.045 million workplace constructing on the 0.29-acre website, in keeping with a proposal submitted to the town in 2017. This plan by no means developed. Kennedy mentioned he isn’t sure what he’ll do with the lot as soon as the church is knocked down at an estimated price of $100,000.
The earlier proprietor proposed in 2010 to rework the church into an indoor market for meals and clothes distributors. That plan didn’t transfer ahead.
Kennedy mentioned the church construction can be too costly to restore and renovate. Bricks are falling off the constructing, which is boarded up and fenced off. The fireplace division has placarded the constructing indicating it’s too harmful structurally for firefighters to enter in case of a fireplace.
St. Jean was one of many first Roman Catholic church buildings to shut within the Capital Area when the ultimate Mass was mentioned there in December 1970. The congregation dates again to 1852 when its first baptisms and marriages have been recorded. The parish moved across the metropolis earlier than the church constructing was erected on Second Avenue simply south of Washington Park.
St. Jean served as a parish for French and French-Canadian residents within the space particularly from neighboring Cohoes, mentioned Kathy Sheehan, historian for the town of Troy and Rensselaer County primarily based on the Hart Cluett Museum.
“It was not as apparent as Little Italy,” Sheehan mentioned in regards to the French presence within the metropolis when it was economically booming through the nineteenth century.
Kennedy mentioned he has been in search of to eliminate the slate roof and some stained glass home windows that weren’t eliminated, presumably as donations, earlier than the constructing is demolished. Kennedy mentioned, “I am nonetheless bullish on Troy.”
