The stained glass windows will stay put in the historic Holy Trinity Church building on Syracuse’s North Side.But a future use for the vacant and deteriorating building remains unclear.
The Syracuse Planning Commission voted Monday against allowing the building owner to remove 22 German-style stained glass windows for use in a Roman Catholic church in Louisiana.
The commission vote upheld a ruling against removing the windows made in September by the Syracuse Landmark Preservation Board. The church building has locally protected historic status.
The Park Street building is vacant because the Catholic Diocese of Syracuse closed Holy Trinity in 2010 and merged its parish with that of St. John the Baptist.
The merged parish owns the shuttered Holy Trinity building and has a deal to sell it to a parish in Louisiana that wants it for its windows and interior contents.
The sale is contingent on the windows being removed, says the Rev. Jon Werner, pastor of the merged parish. The Louisiana parish will work with the local parish to find a use for the building once it buys it, Werner has said.
Andrew Leja, the lawyer for the merged parish, said he did not know what, if any, action his client might take to fight the planning commission’s ruling.
Leja and Werner have argued that the merged parish cannot afford to maintain the empty building. They say it would be better to remove the windows for use in another Catholic church than leave them in the deteriorating building.
Leja argued the preservation board’s decision against removing the windows violates the federal Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, which says without a compelling reason the government cannot implement a land-use regulation that imposes a substantial burden on a church’s exercise of religion.
Local preservationists argued that removing the windows would undermine the building’s historic value and ruin its best shot at useful redevelopment. They say the building owner should work with the community to find a use for the structure that would preserve its history intact.
Planning commission member Linda Henley said she did not see a denial of the request to remove the windows as an infringement on the parish’s mission.
To remove them would not be in the best interest of the community or the neighborhood, she said.