St. Joseph Parish to sell school building

By KATIE LEFEBVRE, Globe staff reporter
Nov. 23, 2006

St. Joseph Parish in Sioux City is in the process of selling the former school building, Holy Family School-St. Joseph Center, to the public school system in Sioux City.

According to Father Michael Erpelding, pastor at St. Joseph, after the school closed, the building was not being used for many events. Two rooms were used everyday for Head Start. The building was also used for religious education classes on Wednesday nights and the gym was being used twice a week for bingo.

The building had been rented out for Head Start and bingo.

"We were trying to break even on a building that otherwise wouldn't be used," said the priest. "The finance council discussed whether it was a good use of parish goods to continue to use the building. Then the heating prices were high. We decided to put it on the market to see if we could find a buyer that could use the building."

The Public Schools of Sioux City expressed an interest in purchasing the building. In the beginning, the school system did not know if it was a good purchase for them or not.

"They thought it was going to be more cost efficient to build new than it was to buy our building and rehab it," said Father Erpelding. "They reconsidered our building with new objectives. Their costs were higher than expected to build a new building. They came back and made an offer to us of $375,000."

The new agreement with the public schools allows Head Start to still use the building with the public schools being their landlord. However, bingo will no longer be held in the building. The religious education classes will now be held in St. Boniface School on the St. Boniface Church grounds.

"We got some money from the transaction and the public school has a facility that is costing them less money than if they had to build new. It is an adjoining piece of property to their existing property (Irving School), which expands their campus," said Father Erpelding. "We think it is a win-win-win."

In the long run, there would have been many costs of keeping the building up - heating, insurance and repairs.

"We thought it was time to get the assets from it and let someone else who needs it, use it," said Father Erpelding.

The notice of the purchase has been read once at the Public School Board Meeting, noted the pastor. It will be read for a second time at the next meeting.

"If there are no major objections, the transaction will take place on Dec. 1," said Father Erpelding.

A prayer service will be held after the 10:30 a.m. Mass on Nov. 26 at about 11:30 a.m. for anyone who was a student, teacher, parent or former pastor of the parish that would like to attend. The service will begin in the church and move to the school.

"We will pray in thanksgiving to St. Joseph for allowing us to have the school for 44 years and for educating all those children," said Father Erpelding. "We are going to pray for the students, the parents, the teachers, the sisters and the priests that have been involved with that."

The statue of St. Joseph will be carried through the building. Then the building will be closed.

"The parishioners grieved more when the school closed than they are grieving us disposing of the property," said the pastor. "They understand the economics of it. They understand the good use of parish resources, but they are still saddened over the loss of an era when we had a Catholic school on the property."