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Father Henry Dahl of St. Peter’s Church, Provincetown Town Manager Keith Bergman and Bishop George Coleman at the Blessing of the Fleet on Sunday. |
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Church & town agree on land/parking deal
New Manor site to be swapped for property & revenue
Mary Ann Bragg
Banner Staff
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Fall River and the town of Provincetown have agreed on a financial deal that would give the town’s nursing home room to expand and the church additional income and land.
Some members of the town Board of Selectmen hastened to say on Tuesday that the details were still to be worked out, but in theory the town would gain an acre of church land adjacent to the Cape End Manor nursing home. In return the Diocese would gain ownership of a half-acre of the town’s parking lot near St. Peter’s Church as well as a percentage of parking revenues for at least 10 years.
Bishop George Coleman announced consummation of the deal at Mass last Sunday during the town’s annual Portuguese Festival celebration. And on Monday the Selectmen and the Cape End Manor Board of Directors basked in the relief of ending the tumultuous search for a workable Manor “care campus” location.
“Initially it was the town’s idea,” Father Henry Dahl said this week. “The town needed that 1.1-acres. They made the proposal to us. And the biggest benefit goes to the town, which is subsidizing [the Manor] at almost $1 million a year.” In theory the town will seek out a company to build and operate a more profitable nursing facility, thus allowing town taxpayers to be released from the annual subsidy.
“What we get out of is, we get 40 parking spaces in the Grace Hall parking lot,” Dahl added. “It will be deeded to us, and we’ll lease it back to the town. We’ll get from that $35,000 or 11 percent of the revenue.”
Currently St. Peter’s has an 80-space parking lot at the side and back of the church that abuts the town’s Grace Hall parking lot but is separated by a steel barrier. Dahl said the church needs the parking revenue to help sustain the 435-family parish and that the money would not be used for any broader, Diocesan financial needs. The church now leases 15 parking spaces to Crowne Pointe Historic Inn.
“We know how important the Manor is,” Dahl said. “We’ve been here for 130 years, and we want to make it a viable place to live.”
The close ties between the Manor board, town officials and St. Peter’s Church seems to have made all the difference in the town’s three-year quest for land. Other attempts to secure land have been rebuffed amidst bad feelings with the town School Committee and property owners along Route 6.
Town Manager Keith Bergman is a member of St. Peter’s Church, and Bishop Coleman mentioned him specifically in his announcement on Sunday. Dahl is a Manor board member, although he has recused himself from meetings during negotiations. Likewise, Manor board chair Marilyn Downey was sitting a few pews in front of Bergman on Sunday and is considered by the Selectmen as the often-needed calm head on all Manor “care campus” matters.
While negotiations are now primarily between lawyers, the first talks were with Bergman, Manor CEO Dennis Anderson and Dahl, and it was Dahl who invited Bergman and Anderson (with the Selectmen’s approval) to make the town’s proposal to the parish council.
“I feel very proud to be a member of St. Peter’s parish,” Bergman said this week. “I’m very proud of what my bishop has done to help the future of this community and of the leadership that Father Dahl has played in this way.”
On the Manor’s side of the deal, the 1.1-acre plot of land has no access to a public street, although once the town owns it vehicular traffic will reach it from Alden Street. The land is comprised of two different parcels. One is a .76-acre lot, owned by the church and valued by the town Assessor’s office at more than $350,000. That .76-acre lot does have a 20-foot wide access to Alden Street and could be built upon but that access is not part of the deal. (Incidentally, the town sold the .76-acre lot to the Diocese in 1956 for $1.) The other portion of the 1.1-acre land is part of the church’s large parcel of cemetery land.
On the church’s side of the deal, the idea for an exchange that involved parking spaces came from a parishioner, Dahl said, when at first the town had offered more undesirable land, at least from the church’s perspective. At first the town was going to give the church the parking spaces, reposition the barriers and let the church run its own parking business. As talks progressed, though, Bergman said that the church requested that a lease agreement be made instead.
In town documentation the annual lease of the 40 spaces by the town would be 11.11 percent of total Grace Hall parking lot revenues or $35,000, whichever is greater. The percentage is based on the fact that the half-acre of land is 11.11 percent of the lot’s total parking spaces. The lease would be for 10 years.
Both Selectmen Michele Couture and Sarah Peake emphasized on Tuesday that the details are still being negotiated. A fall Special Town Meeting will likely be held to finalize the agreement, town officials have said.
On Tuesday Couture, Peake and Bergman all drew a heavy line between the Selectmen’s active support of gay marriage, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishop’s active opposition to gay marriage and the current deal.
“I think they’re two separate issues,” Couture said, who said she would feel the same if it were Shell Oil, for example, whose policies she also disagrees with. “It’s a land negotiation that we’re conducting with the Catholic Church. I certainly believe in the separation of church and state.
Our disagreement [over gay marriage] is with the governor and the attorney general.”
Peake said that she too sees the gay marriage issue as an active dispute with Attorney General Tom Reilly and that she feels a responsibility to ensure the future of the elderly in Provincetown. And Bergman said that while the town respectfully disagrees with Gov. Mitt Romney on gay marriage, the town is equally indebted for his office’s advocacy for federal funding for the Manor.
“The church’s philosophy is that we’ve going to reach out to people in any way that we can,” Father Dahl said. “This is one of the ways that we can reach out. It doesn’t compromise our beliefs at all. And people clearly know where we stand.”
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