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Former church land to be used for retail space

Date: 2/15/2012

Feb. 15, 2012

By Debbie Gardner

debbieg@thereminder.com

WEST SPRINGFIELD — By noon last Tuesday, Associated Building Wreckers had reduced more than half of the former St. Ann's Church on Memorial Avenue to rubble. By 5 p.m., the company had completed its work and the building was but a memory to those who, over the years, attended mass there.

Former parishioners, such as Michelle Denno DiStefano, who posted on Reminder Publications Facebook page Tuesday afternoon that her children had been baptized at St. Ann's, called the church's demolition "so sad."

Though the building is gone, parts of it will possibly live on. According to Mark Dupont, chief executive officer, Catholic Communications, Diocese of Springfield, the church's beautiful stained glass windows are safe in storage, awaiting use in another church or diocese building. It's a process he said the diocese has performed many times before when buildings are sold or re-purposed.

"Before we closed the deal, we removed [the stained glass]," Dupont said, explaining that in the case of these intricate windows, the scenes actually have to be disassembled for storage.

"A chart is made so that they can be reassembled [at a later time]," Dupont explained, adding that the windows, along with any sacred objects contained in the building, would be inventoried and stored at the diocese's patrimony center until a new use was found for the items.

An example of such re-use, Dupont said, was the incorporating of windows from closed parishes in the chapel at the new Holyoke Catholic High School in Chicopee and Lady of the Blessed Sacrament Church in Westfield.

The building, too, would have been re-purposed if the diocese had found a need for it, or a buyer with a plan that would have fit within church criteria for re-use, Dupont said.

"There is always an initial preference if someone steps forward and says they would like to maintain the building," he noted.

In the case of St. Anne's, there was no re-use plan put forth and Dupont said the property was sold to The Colvest Group Ltd. of Windsor, Conn., on Oct. 21, 2011 for $650,000 for use as retail space. Proceeds from the sale, he added, would go to the former church member's new parish, St. Frances Xavier Cabrini Church on Main Street, after closing costs were paid.

Dupont said the diocese closed St. Ann's because of declining attendance in late 2008. Technically a mission of the parish of Mt. Carmel Church in Springfield's South End, he said the church was formed in the 1950s at a time "when the Italian community began to move into the suburbs [and] there was a heavy Catholic population in Agawam, West Springfield and Feeding Hills."

After St. Ann's closure, its lay community merged with another West Springfield parish to form the St. Frances Xavier Cabrini Church.



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