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Date: 10/12/2022
NORTHAMPTON – After months of meetings and debate, the Northampton City Council finally voted to approve the use of $500,000 in Community Preservation Act (CPA) funding for exterior repairs of the St. John Cantius Church.
After receiving approval from Northampton’s Community Preservation Committee (CPC) during its Aug. 24 meeting, the project was sent to City Council, the City Council’s Finance Committee and Community Resources Committee, where it received a neutral recommendation, before returning to the full council during the Oct. 6 meeting.
By approving the funding for the exterior repair project, the site would be protected by historic preservation from demolition. With an approval, O’Connell Development, the owners of the site, would be able to move forward with a project to create market-rate housing inside of the church while preserving the exterior of the church.
While many of the councilors spoke about the conflict they felt when deciding to vote in favor of the project, Ward 5 Councilor Alex Jarrett and Ward 7 Councilor Rachel Maiore spoke against the expenditure.
Jarrett said his top priority for CPA funding was for affordable housing.
“We desperately need more affordable housing and there is a need for more market rate housing in the range that is proposed for this project, but market rate housing can be built by the market, affordable housing can’t,” he said.
Jarrett added that he could not support the project now, but it was a “painful decision,” because the church could be up for demolition if the project was denied.
Maiore added that she was concerned about giving taxpayer money to a private company, citing current economic challenges.
“One of the main charges of council is to be the gatekeepers of hard-earned taxpayer money, and this is money right now that people desperately need and, in this vein, I can’t really OK a half a million dollars of their money to be subsidized to a private, for-profit entity,” she said. “Too many people are hurting right now, and this sends the wrong message about what priorities we have here.”
Ward 1 Councilor Stanley Moulton summed up the thoughts of many of the councilors in favor of the project and said approving the funding use was better than the alternative.
“For me it comes down to, it is not the perfect solution, it’s not the solution I will vote for enthusiastically, it provides – forever – a preservation restriction on the building. It’s a landmark in Northampton, it provides 10 additional rental units, that’s better than what I can reasonably conclude is the alternative, which is a pile of rubble and luxury condos,” he said.
Councilor At Large Jamila Gore added, “It’s not the best option, but right now it seems like the only option we have right in front of us.”
Using an anecdote about an expensive guitar he received for his 60th birthday, Council President Jim Nash said the investment would pay off.
“It was an investment for me in the future of what it meant to me to have a good instrument and that the investment here we are looking for, that this money will continue to pay off. Residents of Northampton 50 years or 100 years from now will look at that building. We know the way the numbers are going, and they’ll look at the number we spent today and think that was easy, they’ll have no idea,” he said. “If we spend that money today, then we will preserve that building forever, and that’s what this is about, us getting the future of that building.”
Before seeing the support for the rehabilitation from The Friends of the St. John Cantius Church, Nash said he was against the project.
Prior to the council’s discussion, many of the speakers during public comment spoke in favor of approving the project, including members of Northampton’s CPC.
With a 7-2 vote, the council approved the appropriation of $500,000 for the exterior rehabilitation of the St. John Cantius Church.
Extensive coverage of the lead up to the City Council’s approval of the restoration project is available online at thereminder.com.
The Northampton City Council next meets on Oct. 20 and coverage of that meeting will appear in the Oct. 27 edition of The Reminder.