Evanston City Council members granted Monday a local church’s request for legislative relief of the city’s Preservation Committee ruling on what kind of roofing materials should be used on their landmark parish center building.
Aldermen voted 5-2 in favor of granting St. Mary’s Church officials appeal of the Commission. In their argument, St. Mary’s representatives maintained that the extra cost of complying with the Commission’s decision that the church should replace ceramic tiles on their parish center building with similar type tiles would have impact on their budget and the work the church does in aiding the needy of the community.
The church was requesting legislative relief from a city Preservation Commission ruling in December that similar ceramic tiles be used in the church’s project to replace the clay tile on its Parish Center building at 1012 Lake St., matching the roofing material on the main church building located at 1421 Oak Ave.
Church representatives had sought to replace the roof with fiberglass shingles, maintaining the continuing use of tile would be prohibitively expensive, costing roughly $113,000 more, they said. The new fiberglass shingle roof would compliment the existing roof on the church, they argued, and would also result in significant savings over time because of its easier maintenance.
Speaking in behalf of the church, Andy Vezzano, a parishioner and an architect, told aldermen Monday that the church, at the urging of city officials, had come up with a compromise, using a stone-coated metal tile compatible with the appearance and quality of clay tiles, that would reduce their extra costs to roughly $50,000.
Also speaking in behalf of the church, James Wolinski, formerly the city’s Community Development director, said church officials still hoped the city would consider their original proposal, allowing the fiberglass shingles.
“I think we have to emphasize we are talking about an auxiliary building here, not the main church,” he told aldermen. ” If we were talking about the church there would be no discussion. We’re talking about an auxiliary building where the roof would cost us 40 percent of what it cost to reroof the main church.”
He stressed that the church was not appealing because of financial hardship.
“We are appealing because we are a faith-based community and we’d rather put the total of $113,000 (the difference between a shingle roof and a clay roof) to needy Evanston residents — to buy food, to help pay rents, to keep their utilities on. We wold like to continue to do this important ministry and saving (money) by allowing us to do shingles would do that.”
In council discussion, Ald. Melissa Wynne, 3d, while acknowledging the church’s good works, spoke of the obligation that comes for an institution located in a city historic district.
“You’re asking only a $50,000 discount here,” she told church representatives. “I can’t imagine that your congregation, which is large, is not willing to come up with this money to preserve this building, which I think is quite beautiful and should be maintained with a tile roof.”
In the case of her own church, located a block away from St. Mary’s, the Preservation Commission standards “guided our church in putting in a new entrance ramp,” Wynne said, “and our church is very, very much to the benefit of that. We have accepted the fact that we are in a historic district, so that means we had to (adhere) to a higher standard while we maintained our church mission.”
Other council members, though, spoke in support of granting the church’s request.
Ald. Donald Wilson, 4th, argued that the church’s proposal “is not an unreasonable compromise.”
“And honestly, I don’t feel like the church put us in this situation,” he said. “I think we’re the ones that put people that are in the districts and in the community in this position.”
He acknowledged that the cost is not that great and that the church could probably come up with it, “but I would rather see a little bit more money go to other things.”
Ald. Eleanor Revelle, 7th, sided with Wynne, though. She said she was leaning toward supporting the church’s compromise proposal but, after walking around the site, “you see very clearly a clay tile roof of the main building in very close proximity to the clay tile roof of the chapel. To me it represents a very harmonious whole.”
She quoted from the city’s preservation ordinance which recommends against the removal or alteration of distinctive architectural materials which give a historic structure character.
“And to me the red clay tiles are a very distinctive architectural feature of the whole building, the main building and the chapel,” she said.
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