Patrimony 201 Main Street

Click HERE to read a Brief summary of Pastoral Planning steps January 2019 – January 2020.

April 1 Update

Although the Pandemic has changed the pace and style of many activities of our Parish, our Parish Pastoral Council (PPC) has continued to meet many times by ZOOM and last week by its first in-person meeting in about two years. As you know from praying together the Prayers of the Faithful at Mass, our PPC has been deliberating for over two years on how our patrimony (201 Main Street…the old school building and the grounds) could support the Mission of our Parish in the long term in sustaining our faith community. (FYI: there is a much more detailed step by step description of the long process on our website found on its own page called “The Patrimony”), but I am writing a brief summary of the process.

You may recall that the PPC started the process with three public meetings to solicit any and every suggestion a parishioner or neighbor wished to make. Dr. Bernard Swain, an outside consultant for Parish Life was retained to help direct and facilitate this process and all the many discussions to take place. Over 120 ideas, suggestions or recommendations were offered. Over time the PPC discussed all these issues and sorted them out according to similarity or distinct differences to make the discussion process easier. The PPC then found there were four ways forward and ultimately after many discussions reached the consensus that we needed to develop 201 Main Street to help support the Mission. The PPC also asked that an expert in real estate and Town of Franklin Building Zoning issues be involved so that the PPC would ultimately be offering suggestions that had possibilities of becoming real. Matthew Kelley was asked to take on this role as a volunteer councilor to the PPC. Last Tuesday night, March 21 the PPC recommended to me that we develop 201 Main Street by reserving some of the land for building our own purposes, a building for Faith Formation, Meeting Space and Parish Office Area along with parking roughly the same as at present and some other various needs of possibility with the rest of the land to be leased or sold to support as much as possible this new Faith Center. With the unanimous recommendation of the PPC I now turn to the Parish Finance Council (PFC) to help me with the next steps. We will also have to meet the requirements of the Archdiocese in taking this vision of the PPC to the practical level. There are financial rules, both canonical and civil that must be followed. The PFC will recommend to me the next practical steps to keep this all moving along. I will be contacting the Archdiocesan Real Estate Department for its direct assistance in all the next many steps. I am grateful for the long and hard work of the PPC in hearing all the suggestions, praying over all of our concerns and suggestions and dreaming and thinking about what would be best for the Mission of the Parish over all. There were many meetings and much discussion to get to the very best recommendation. There still will be many more hours of hard work and discussion with planning etc. to happen. At various points I will continue to keep you up to date on where the process is at that time.