St. Mary's School may get wrecking ball

Pastor cites prohibitive

maintenance costs

By FRITZ BUSCH

Journal Staff Writer

NEW ULM -- Efforts to find alternative uses for the former St. Mary's school campus buildings are at an impasse, according to the Rev. Douglas L. Grams of the Church of Saint Mary.

In a letter written Friday to the New Ulm Heritage Preservation Commission, Grams said that after consulting with Bishop Clayton Nienstedt, St. Mary's parish did not feel it could continue to maintain the buildings -- that it was better to cut losses and raze them.

The decision came after numerous efforts over several years to find uses for the school campus produced no positive results. The campus includes a school building that housed elementary classes for New Ulm Area Catholic Schools and a building that once served as a day-care facility and a convent before that.

"This is not a decision lightly made," Grams wrote. "A conscientious effort was made to respect the historic nature of the site by spending several years (starting even prior to the buildings becoming vacant) seeking alternative uses. While we recognize the loss of historic designation is now inevitable, it is fiscally impossible to continue as we have the last few years."

Grams wrote that he hoped the New Ulm City Council and Historic Preservation Association could appreciate the constraints of his parish.

"While we were willing in an effort of community stewardship, to attempt to collaborate in meeting a community need for subsidized housing, while simultaneously preserving historic property, we cannot defer addressing the site any longer," Grams said. "Obviously, we will attempt to see that items within the building, i.e. cross, corner stone, statue, etc. are 'mined' before proceeding with demolition."

The parish's efforts to find alternative uses for the school campus included:

* Visiting with officials and volunteer organizations.

* Learning that it could not be used for anything other than housing or educational purposes, which precluded its use as an office complex (which one group considered); or a business incubator (which volunteers thought might work).

* A group interested in providing day care facilities rejected the site as too expensive to re-configure.

* A group that retro-fitted a much smaller school building into assisted-living apartments in Redwood Falls looked at the site. Another site was chosen because without a sizeable grant, a retro-fit would have been more costly than building new. Going through the lengthy grant process would have been risky as they were ready to start, and could have faced the possibility of grant rejection.

* The parish retained the services of a consultant, one used many times by the city, who brought possibilities to the table. The consultant, parish, and city worked almost three years with Metro Plains (which has re-built more than 200 schools and hospitals into housing units and community centers) and the Minnesota Housing Finance Agency -- the provider of tax credit grants.

* Three grant applications were denied by the MHFA, the last time by just two points. Grant approval probably would have had a positive result for Metro Plains, St. Mary's, and the New Ulm Housing Authority.

New Ulm Heritage Preservation Commission member Jim Bodine said he won't give up yet on trying to retro-fit the former school building.

"Preservation prevents waste," Bodine said. "Heritage is important in New Ulm. There is lots of history in that building. Heritage tourism is the fastest-growing type of tourism. We often have bus loads of heritage tourists visiting New Ulm. If New Ulm looked like Bloomington, nobody would care much about it."

Bodine said he hopes somebody can still develop the former school building.

"I'm going to keep poking at it," Bodine said.