St. Stephen Catholic Church, 5880 S. Howell Ave., built in 1847, sits about a mile from Mitchell International Airport and faces an adult lounge and a parking lot. Father Richard Liska placed a "For Sale By Owner" sign in front of his brown brick church three years ago.
I remember it being Cream City brick.
"Part of the reason to relocate is to go to more of a people setting rather than an industrial or commercial setting," Liska said. "Still, I think parishioners would lament. When something has been a part of your life for a long time, there's lament."
St. Stephen's has a building site in Oak Creek, I understand. The parish web site shows a rendering of the planned new church, not the present one. A St. Stephen parishioner told me the pastor wants to have half the money needed to build before starting construction. The parishioner's lament was that the parish is paying real estate tax on its new building site in the meantime. That meantime, the article says, has been three years. Usually it would take a lot less than three years to convince a seller to contract with a real estate agent.
And sales restrictions can limit the pool of prospective buyers, Liska said.
"We would not sell the property to anyone who would be using it for a purpose contrary to the nature, purpose or morality of a church - an abortion clinic, maybe, a gentlemen's club," he said.
Mike reads something into that "maybe". There's no maybe that our Archdiocese would finance a sale to another denomination.
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