Can a soaring but empty Catholic church in Evanston provide some relief for those who have suffered financial hardship due to the COVID-19 pandemic? Neighborhood leaders hope so.
St. Mark Catholic Church at 3500 Montgomery Road hasn’t hosted services since 2010, when its congregation merged with others and moved to Bond Hill. But the 114-year-old church remains, and the Evanston Community Council and neighborhood residents last winter began an ongoing effort to purchase it, preserve it and turn it into a community events center.
Then the COVID-19 pandemic struck, causing many in Cincinnati and across the country to lose their jobs as the economy ground to a halt.
That has hit Evanston hard. The predominantly African-American neighborhood has already seen higher levels of unemployment and decades of disinvestment, though local leaders have worked to improve conditions there. Census data suggests more than one-third of its residents live below the poverty line, with more than 30 percent of the residents in the Census tract St. Mark occupies making less than $10,000 a year.
AÂ previous pantry established by former St. Mark parishioners closed in April 2018, according to records at the pantry. It operated Mondays and Thursdays, serving Evanston residents who needed food assistance.
Evanston Community Council President Gregory Stewart is helping spearhead the effort to reopen it.
“The people of St. Mark, even when they moved to Resurrection in Bond Hill, they still cared about people here,” he says as he gives a tour of the space while wearing a face mask and gloves. “Even in that move, they invested money and renovated the space here.The month before they closed, they served 600 people with this pantry. We could start contacting those people again. If they had 600 then, think about how many we’d have now.”
Because it closed just two years ago and was renovated less than a decade ago, Stewart and other Evanston leaders believe they could get the pantry up and running in short order. The space looked mostly unchanged during the brief tour this week — a contrast to other parts of the church, which have seen damage due to neglect.
Some funding is already in place, but the council needs the OK from the city and from the building’s owners.
“We have a little money for this right now,” he says. “We have a grant from a foundation called Health Path to hire a part-time director to get it started. If we could get in here in June, we could get it up and running in June. We’d certainly try to get volunteers to service the people who come. We’d also have social work students we would partner with to help people with SNAP and other benefits. We have an employment center here we would partner with if someone needs employment.”Â
Stewart says that planning for social distancing at the pantry for the duration of the pandemic is already being worked out.
The reopening of the pantry could also be a demonstration of the building’s value for the community as neighborhood residents work to preserve it.
Originally home to German-American congregants, its makeup shifted in the 1960s and 1970s, becoming one of Cincinnati’s major churches for African-American Catholics.
By 2010, however, Catholic congregations were shrinking. St. Mark’s merged with three other parishes and moved to Bond Hill that year, leaving the church more or less empty except for a food pantry and soup kitchen. A charter school has operated out of the church’s school building as well. The Church of the Resurrection — the name of the combined parishes including St. Mark — is looking to sell the property.
The community council has long sought to find a new use for the landmark building. In its Evanston Comprehensive Plan, which was approved by Cincinnati City Council last month, the community council indicated it would pursue local historic designation for the church, highlighting its importance to Evanston.
Recent potential plans for development at the site call for at least partial demolition of the building.
But a group of residents including Stewart have a vision that leaves the 35,000-square-foot church intact to host some combination of community events; business tenants; an entrepreneurship incubator; a small library; social, senior and health services; arts organizations; and other entities.
The group is currently fundraising toward the goal of purchasing and renovating the building.
In the meantime, Stewart is worried about how the pandemic will impact Evanston — which school meal programs will be available for families over the summer, for one, and about the Evanston residents who may find themselves unemployed or underemployed due the pandemic.
“We talked to a police officer here last night,” he says. “He said people are struggling. If I hear that from a policeman, I’m paying attention. People will do things they don’t want to do to survive if they have to. People are close to the margins now. Could this be a resource for people who live near here to keep them from sinking further? We know there is a void here.”
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This article appears in May 6 – Jun 14, 2020.
