Catholic church in Hyde Park looks to raise money by leasing some of its property for apartments

Officials at Most Precious Blood Church have begun looking at leasing church property to an apartment developer as a way to ensure a new revenue stream for the church and two affiliated parishes in Readville and Milton.

But at a meeting last night at the former St. Anne School in Readville, parishioners soundly opposed a proposal to turn the main church building on Maple Street into 24 apartments and convert a basement chapel into the main worship area.

The Blue Hills Collaborative, which oversees Most Precious Blood, St. Anne and St. Pius in Milton, is, for the moment, actually in good financial condition, with some $6.5 million in the bank, in large part from the sale of property, and with $500,000 a year in rental payments for the former Most Precious Blood School on Hyde Park Avenue.

The collaborative was set to spend $5 million of its savings on repairs to the 138-year-old Most Precious Blood Church last year but called off the work after Boston Preparatory Charter Public School, which had been renting the school, pulled out of its lease on completion of its own school building on River Street near Mattapan.

Another charter school, Roxbury Prep, signed a three-year lease while it tries to build its own school on Belgrade Avenue in Roslindale, but church officials realized that after that, the church could face a risk finding another tenant for the Hyde Park Avenue school. Coupled with a still aging church building and declining Sunday offerings, Father Ronald Coyne and a church financial official began thinking about ways to ensure the church's long-term survival.

Working with the Archdiocese of Boston's property-management office and a local real-estate broker, they came up with the proposal for removing the main church building's stained-glass windows, pews and other religious items and letting a developer turn it into 24 apartments. Revenue from the leases could net the church $50,000 or $60,000 annually, which would ease financial concerns even as the church paid to expand a basement chapel into a new church for the parish. Because of its location near the Hyde Park commuter-rail station, the city would likely let the developer provide less parking than otherwise needed - a good thing given the scarcity of parking already at the church.

At a meeting with roughly 200 parishioners from the three collaborative churches, last night, Coyne and Deborah Dillon, director of property management for the archdiocese, emphasized the proposal was not a done deal, it was just an idea, and that just closing the parish was not even on the table.

But parishioners strongly objected to the conversion of the "mother church" into rental apartments. One said it was the most "awe inspiring" of the three local church buildings and even just walking into it is "spiritually uplifting."

And parishioners proposed other possible ways for the church to bring in more revenue.

One parishioner suggested turning the old St. Anne school, now used for joint programs by the three churches, into housing. She said Readville is suddenly hot among developers and that the land might prove highly attractive to a developer. In fact, tonight, the BPDA holds a meeting at the school building on one developer's plans for 521 apartments next to the Readville train station. Collaborative programs could be moved into the Most Precious Blood basement, with some renovation work, she said.

Another proposed letting a developer turn the Most Precious Blood school into apartments - they could probably add floors to it, that would mean extra revenue and the site would have the same transit-oriented benefits as the church building. Church officials said this would also be worth looking at, although they added any work couldn't begin until at least the end of Roxbury Prep's lease.

A third proposed bringing back bingo. Coyne said if anybody wants to go to the tremendous effort it would take to run that, he'd be happy to hear them out, but said bingo's days are likely gone now that people can just hop on a bus to go to a casino with better payouts.

Others suggested a greater emphasis on "evangelizing," on bringing back members who have stopped attending the church and on attracting the new families some parishioners said have started moving into Hyde Park. The church has seen a growth in Haitian members in recent years.

Although Coyne and other officials repeatedly said no decision about the future has been made, they did point out the current physical state of the Most Precious Blood church; one official estimated the building had made a couple of years left before it began to fall apart in a major way.

Turn this into apartments?