Preserving a Chaska Landmark

Preserving a Chaska landmark: Guardian Angels restoring church, looks to public for help

By Mark W. Olson

The brick walls of Guardian Angels Catholic Church have protected its parishioners from the elements for 125 years. Now the parishioners hope to protect the walls from the elements.

“The skin of the church is peeling off like a bad sunburn,” said the Rev. Paul Jarvis, leader of the Guardian Angels parish.

Throughout its history, the church’s Chaska brick exterior has been sandblasted and its soft mortar replaced with hard cement. As a result, the brick is cracking and eroding. In some places, plants are growing between the bricks.)

“The church steeple is one of the most – the most – visible landmarks, and we’re fearful that continued disintegration of the Chaska brick exterior will lead to structural damage,” Jarvis said. “It won’t be compromised in the future if we start acting soon.”

The church is in the midst of an effort to restore the brickwork of its historic church, friary and friary walls. However, with hundreds of thousands of brick, it’s no small task, and it’s no small price tag.

The project, which includes the brick repair and tuck-pointing, could cost approximately $1.5 million, Jarvis said.

So the church is making a plea, within its parish and to the general public, for help funding the exterior restoration work on the church. The first step is raising awareness, “not just of the parishioners and the school parents, but raising awareness of the wider community,” Jarvis said.

“I encourage Carver County residents, when they come into downtown Chaska from either the north, south, east or west, notice the community’s most visible landmark pointing up to the heavens and ask yourselves, “What would our skyline look without it?”

Long-term presence

Jarvis argues that repairing the church is necessary to ensure the downtown parish’s long-term viability.

“The archdiocese is currently looking to see where churches need to be closed, and which churches need to be expanded,” he said. “It is obviously far cheaper to repair existing structures than build new and necessarily larger structures out in open land.”

“More than a few people outside of Carver County, when they look at a map of the Catholic parishes of Carver County, they wonder about the possibility of clustering various parishes together. And one thing I hear from a number of people who are not from Carver County, is why don’t we build a huge mega parish out on [Highway] 212, out west of Chaska,” Jarvis said. “And when I say, ‘mega parish,’ I say a parish at least the size of St. Hubert’s – a $30 million church.”

“We’ve more than doubled in size in the past two years. What we have in our favor, we’re addressing, reasonably addressing, our various repair needs over the next four years – and if we don’t do that, and if we don’t responsibly do that, we’re susceptible to being clustered, Jarvis said.

If Guardian Angels ever moved, the existing church would more than likely be sold. “What coffee shop, what community theater project, what townhome developer would want to purchase property that you will immediately have to put in more than $1 million tuck-pointing?” asked Jarvis. “The wider Carver County community has to realize that if [we’re] forced to move to a new location, the property will be more marketable if the structures are brought down.

“It really is in the interest of the city and the county to help keep Guardian Angels in downtown Chaska,” Jarvis said.

Work postponed

“What we have is a situation where there is a couple decades worth of repairs that have been postponed – and they can’t be postponed anymore,” Jarvis said.

So, the church hired an engineer to guide its repair work. “There’s a priority of repairs that need to be done – some need to be now, some can be done in a year’s time. And the tuck-pointing issue, which is the largest aspect of repairs on the north campus – they can be done over a several-year period of time,” Jarvis said.

The church was able to save money by hiring one private contractor, Patrick Sieben, to complete the brick repair, tuck-pointing and, in one case, wall reconstruction.

Sieben’s bid was almost half of the larger companies, Jarvis said, “and it’s largely because he’s doing it over a four-year period of time and he doesn’t have a lot of overhead as a one-man operation." Since the project is taking place over four years, the church doesn’t have as big a cash-flow issue, and doesn’t need to take out a large loan, Jarvis said.

“The reason why the tuck-pointing issue is more than a cosmetic challenge is that roughly 10 years ago we restored the interior of the church, and if we don’t tuck-point … the moisture will begin seeping into the interior and destroy the relatively recently restored interior walls,” he said.

In the estimated $1.5 million price tag, there are other projects involved besides the brick work. The church is stabilizing the stone base of its west wall, fixing drainage in the friary gardens and repairing its roof.

Earlier estimates had placed the cost at $750,000 to $800,000 for tuck-pointing certain areas of the church. However, construction consultants recommended tuck-pointing the entire church.

Cross-denominational

“We’ve explored the possibility of funding from foundations, and in the current climate, there is not a lot of money to go around. The recession has greatly affected what foundations can do. More importantly, foundations today are reluctant to give grants to religious organizations,” Jarvis said.

“And we know that the city and the county cannot provide us the funds for repairs,” Jarvis said. “This is why we’re reaching out to corporate citizens, to civic leaders, to organizations in Carver County to help us with this effort.”

Jarvis has already garnered some cross-denominational support for the project. The Rev. Bruce Arnevik, interim pastor at Crown of Glory Lutheran Church called the Catholic Church an “anchor faith community.” While Crown of Glory faces its “own financial challenges,” Arnevik said he hoped Guardian Angels would be successful in finding corporate sponsorship.

“It’s kind of that New England charm tucked down into the town, and presents that unique small-town feel,” said Bob Roepke, St. John’s Lutheran Church parishioner and former mayor, of the Guardian Angels steeple.

“It just presents an identity of community – an identity of faith. And those two things working together, it’s symbolic in a lot of positive ways, so why shouldn’t we all care about keeping that healthy?” Roepke said. “I think, because of that, I think it’s broader than the responsibility of just one denomination, and it’s the responsibility of the broader community.”

Two campuses

Late last year, the church has started fundraising to restore the exterior of what it terms the “north campus.” However, it also has long-term plans for its “south campus” as well.

The north campus includes the church, friary building, and friary walls. The south campus includes the parish offices and Guardian Angels K-8 school.

The church has hired Miller Dunwiddie Architecture to review the entire church campus, and prioritize needs, said Steve Kingsbury, chair of the Buildings and Grounds Committee.

A Guardian Angels committee is currently discussing an official capital campaign to tackle the entire campus. “Now there’s a capital campaign group that’s been created at Guardian Angels that’s starting to work that part of it – what are the projects we’re trying to do, and what order, and how much and how do we pay – all those kinds of questions are on the table,” he said.

“We have to keep after those old buildings,” Kingsbury said.