Lost Opportunities

[Coke6pk]

A lot of churches are needing to amalgamate / share spaces to stay alive... and sometimes that's not enough, so I agree, this arrangement with St Matthews makes a lot of sense for both congregations.

A long time ago, I was a member at St Philips on Woodhaven (now defunct). The congregation agreed to sell of a parcel of land that was unused to a developer who was going to build a retirement residence that was to be named after St Philips. After the sale, things "fell thru", and that developer resold the land to a new developer who just built some residential homes. The congregation felt cheated, but there isn't much to do when you sell the land... you no longer have any control over it.

When St. Mark's amalgamated with two other churches to form Trillium Lutheran, there was discussion along the same lines (Sell to a developer with the stipulation that a certain amount was for affordable housing / community outreach / place of worship) but once that sale is done, you have no say in it when the developer comes back with a "Yeah, that wont work with our new plans". I doubt having that as a condition of sale is an option. That's why St Marks went with a group that ONLY does affordable housing.

Coke

[jamincan]

The congregation felt cheated, but there isn't much to do when you sell the land... you no longer have any control over it.

It is possible to attach a restrictive covenant to the property that remains on the deed and is binding to all future property owners.

[kps]

I was walking on Roy Street the other day, and noticed how close the back of the old Zion United Church's Sunday School Room is to the yard of the house on 41 Roy Street. A friend and I were researching the history, whether the house or the church extension came first. [...]

There's a 1913 map you can find online that suggests the house predates the current church footprint, but they were already fairly close. The next earlier map I know of is 1879, when neither exist.

If only Kitchener put their historical fire insurance maps online like Waterloo does, this would be easy to answer. (KPL seems to be actively hostile to sharing historical information.)

[tomh009]

Anyway, as my friend and I endeavoured to research this question, she stumbled across this thesis in architecture on the internet, devoted to the old abandoned church buildings DTK. I thought it suitable to upload here because as of now, we know that at least one of the churches  (Trinity United previously located at Duke and Frederick) studied has been demolished in favour of a high rise condo building. It's a lost opportunity because it could've gone to much more creative use of the space, while preserving the heritage of the downtown, instead of doing away with it forever. (I also cross posted in the "Doors Closed Waterloo" thread. Here is the link: https://curve.carleton.ca/system/files/e...wntown.pdf

Some nice ideas in the thesis!

But, the challenge is that we need someone who wants to fund and develop those ideas. Land in DTK is not inexpensive, so any such project will be inherently expensive -- and the income streams from those projects are much less certain than from a residential or commercial development project. Unless the city decides to fund such a project, but getting city funding is not so easy, either.