More than three months after approving the purchase, the city of Waterbury has acquired the former Sacred Heart church property and four buildings at 13 Wolcott St. for $950,000.
According to a warranty deed filed June 13 in the city clerk’s office, the city acquired the former church buildings from All Saints Parish Corp., which is held by the Archdiocese of Hartford.
According to city property records, the buildings include the 13,791-square-foot church, which was built in 1940; the 7,858-square-foot rectory, which was built in 1900; the 33,642-square-foot elementary school, built in 1940; and the 12,462-square-foot convent, also built in 1940.
The acquisition also includes 2.5 acres of land.
The Board of Alderman approved the purchase on March 11 by a 12-3 vote, stipulating that American Rescue Plan Act funds would be used for the acquisition.
In an interview with Hartford Business Journal on Tuesday, Mayor Paul K. Pernerewski Jr. said plans for the property include leasing and then eventually selling both the convent and rectory buildings to Connecticut Renaissance for a halfway house for men.
“The convent has a halfway house for men coming out of prison that is run by CT Renaissance, and they’ve had that since the early 1980s,” Pernerewski said. “So the plan going forward is to lease them both the convent and the rectory building.”
He said CT Renaissance will renovate the buildings and then relocate a halfway house currently located at 24 Central Ave., into the renovated rectory. He added that to make the proposal work, CT Renaissance would have to sell the Central Avenue building, which is located just off West Main Street near the Mattatuck Museum in the city’s center.
“It frees up a building in the central business district,” the mayor said.
For the former school building, Pernerewski said the plan is to create a re-entry center for former inmates, providing job training and counseling, among other services. He said the city has begun looking for grants to help pay for developing the center, including having discussions with the Northwest Regional Workforce Investment Board.
“That would be where guys coming out of prison could get real job skills, so … they’re making a decent wage where they can support their families and are less likely to slip back into the habits they had before,” the mayor said, adding that job training could include teaching manufacturing skills to help offset the workforce needs of manufacturers in the city.
Creating the re-entry center on the same property would also make it easy for halfway house residents to utilize it, he said.
As for the church building, Pernerewski said he hopes to use it to help address “a huge increase in homelessness.” The church has a large basement with a kitchen, which would make it suitable to convert to a space to house and feed families, particularly during the winter months.
“Putting that shelter there would make sense,” he said, since Greater Waterbury Interfaith Ministries already operates a soup kitchen directly across the street.
“It is really a home run, if we can make it work,” the mayor said. “And I have every reason to believe we can.”
