Funding also set aside for outreach efforts
The 15 South Ave. campus of St. Andrew & St. Luke Episcopal Church in Beacon is unofficially for sale, although church leaders say a more realistic scenario has them holding onto the property and using it for community service.
The 124-year-old church building, along with an attached three-story carriage house and the adjacent rectory, have not been listed for sale but are being advertised on social media by Daniel Aubry, a Beacon real-estate agent. The half-acre site includes more than 10,000 square feet of existing construction.
There is no asking price; Aubry said Wednesday (July 31) that it would be determined if a serious buyer expresses interest. A theater group has inquired about the site, but only preliminarily, he said.
Church officials said in June that the Episcopal Diocese of New York, which owns the property, might consider selling if a lawsuit it filed a year ago against the City of Beacon over access to a city-owned parking lot behind the church dragged on or did not end favorably. The church moved worship services for its 100 parishioners from South Avenue to its 850 Wolcott Ave. campus in April.
The Rev. John Williams, the rector at St. Andrew, said this week that the Diocese would entertain offers on the South Avenue property, but “we’re not intending to sell right now.” Instead, he said, the decision has been made to sell two pictorial Tiffany windows from the South Avenue church (a third will go to the Wolcott Avenue campus) and 12 to 14 geometric glass Tiffany windows, all dating to 1900, when the sanctuary was built.
In addition, the church has put aside funding to operate the South Avenue campus as an outreach center for nonprofit agencies serving the community, Williams said. Space could eventually be available for rental, or the church could reach a short-term agreement to give space to an organization that needs it but cannot afford rent, he said.
“We’ll explore working with other agencies to see if we want to keep that [site] as an outreach center permanently,” Williams said.
It is currently inhabited by the church’s food pantry and the Rise Up Project that recently helped produce the Lines of Demarcation: Memories from Beacon’s Black Communities of the 20th Century documentary. Several Narcotics Anonymous groups also hold meetings there.
The lawsuit, filed by St. Andrew after construction began on the new Beacon fire station, is in its 14th month. In June 2023, Beacon officials erected a fence around the gravel lot behind the church to store equipment and materials for the fire station. The church argued that the city could not restrict parishioners’ access to the lot because a 1987 agreement between St. Andrew and the Lewis Tompkins Hose Co., the former owner of the lot, guaranteed that both could use it.
The city purchased the lot and opened it for public parking in 2020.
Beacon attorneys on July 12 filed their opposition to a church request made in February for summary judgment, or a decision by Dutchess County Judge Thomas Davis without a trial or witness testimony. The request, made Feb. 17, seeks to “hastily obtain a judicial declaration” without sufficient evidence, city attorneys Nick Ward-Willis and Robert Zitt wrote.
The attorneys called the 1987 pact an “agreement to agree” to negotiate an easement over the parcel but said it is not an enforceable commitment obligating the city to anything.
Church attorney David Chen filed a response six days later, arguing that the “clear, unambiguous language of the 1987 agreement gives the church a right to park in the parking lot co-equal to that of the city.” Chen also said that Davis should disregard as opinion the affidavit of a title search expert used by the city.
