Beacon, Church Still at Odds

Sides agree to temporary measures for duration of case

There has been little movement between the City of Beacon and St. Andrew & St. Luke Episcopal Church, as the sides remain gridlocked in their dispute over a city-owned parking lot.

Both sides last month agreed to accept a Dutchess County judge’s temporary order for alternate parking arrangements for the duration of the litigation. While Judge Thomas Davis has ordered the attorneys for the city and church to convene in Poughkeepsie on Aug. 30, there is no indication in the more than 60 documents filed with the court that a decision is imminent.

St. Andrew filed suit against the city, Mayor Lee Kyriacou and City Administrator Chris White on June 26, alleging that they had “unilaterally” fenced off a parking lot behind the church and stored construction equipment and building materials there as demolition began on the Tompkins Hose fire station.

On July 12, Davis ordered the church to accept the city’s temporary offer of 22 parking spaces in a lot at 21 South Ave., the site of the former Martin Luther King Cultural Center. In addition, the city has dedicated 17 on-street spaces on South Avenue and the City Hall parking lot to churchgoers on Sunday mornings.

A 12-foot lane has also been created in the construction zone to allow trucks access to the rear of the church to deliver supplies for its food pantry.

The Rev. John Williams, the rector at St. Andrew, said on Aug. 2 that the makeshift arrangement is “satisfactory at the moment, but is not a long-term solution.” Church attendance is typically down during the summer, Williams said, but St. Andrew is hosting the premier of a student film in September, and he’s hopeful a decision will be rendered by then.

“The facts have all been presented,” he said. “We all agree that the documents themselves are the facts. We’re hoping that the summary judgment will be a matter of weeks.”

The Rev. John Williams, rector of St. Andrew & St. Luke Episcopal Church, stands at a parking lot that is the source of a dispute with the City of Beacon. (File photo by J. Simms)

In an affidavit filed on July 21, White disagreed with St. Andrew’s claim that 40 vehicles park in the disputed lot for worship services every Sunday. A staff member reviewed videos posted on social media by the church and said that, based on attendance, closer to 20 cars park there, White testified.

In an affidavit filed on July 21, White disagreed with St. Andrew’s claim that 40 vehicles park in the disputed lot for worship services every Sunday. A staff member reviewed videos posted on social media by the church and said that, based on attendance, closer to 20 cars park there, White testified.

In its lawsuit, the church has argued that the city ignored a 1987 agreement establishing the church and the Tompkins Hose fire company’s shared access to the gravel parking lot. White noted in his testimony that the city and church have previously disagreed about use of the lot, which the city purchased from the volunteer fire company in 2020.

In 2021, St. Andrew installed “church parking only” signs at entry points to the lot, “which the city subsequently had to remove given their impropriety and the fact that the city purchased the parking lot to serve both the fire station and the public,” White said. According to his testimony, the signs were never reinstalled and “at no point since was the parking lot restricted to church parking only.”

The church has asked Davis to force the city to remove the fence around the parking lot and restore the lot to its “original and intended condition.” St. Andrew maintains that the 1987 agreement gave it and the fire company “equal rights to use the parking lot” and that the parties agreed to consult with each other so that one party “shall not interfere with the use of the parking lot by the other.”

However, city contractors began razing the outdated fire station in June. Once demolition is complete, a $14.7 million facility that will serve as Beacon’s centralized fire station will be constructed. In other words, the church’s demand that the construction site be returned to a gravel parking lot would jeopardize the fire station project and “potentially cost taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars in delay claims from the contractors,” White said.

The lot will be paved and striped for 52 parking spaces during construction. In his affidavit, also filed on July 21, Beacon attorney Nick Ward-Willis called the church’s assertion that no harm would come from delaying the city’s project “patently absurd.”