Historic Church Project: Who cares about some dumb old church anyway?

Guest article by City Councilman Jon Snyder

Who cares about some dumb old church? Well, I do. And maybe you do too.

My wife and I bought an old World War I-era historic building in Spokane in December of 2000. Our goal was to renovate it and raise our family there. Rehabbing the building was a long and challenging process. We learned — sometimes the hard way — about the many issues involved with bringing an old building back to life.

We learned about getting the building listed on the local and national historic register. By adhering to some guidelines and getting approval of our rehab plan, we were eligible for both registers. The national register offered an income tax credit and the local register offered property tax abatement. Both incentives ended up being crucial to making the project pencil out for us.

Actually the project never penciled out. But we did it anyway because we loved the building. The incentives, however, were crucial in keeping us financially afloat.

After the project was completed I began to notice anew all the old buildings in town, including our historic houses of worship. Some were still magnificent, some were clearly facing maintenance challenges. When I was elected to City Council one of the first things I did was research ways to support our historic churches and what I discovered surprised me; none of the incentives that we used to help renovate our building were available to historic houses of worship.

Tax credits and tax abatements can only be used by organizations that actually pay taxes. Since active churches are tax-exempt these benefits are of no use. Another possible source of rehab help, state or federal historic preservation grants, are extremely limited and terribly difficult to come by. Add to that the fact that urban growth patterns often limit parking and that older buildings can also have high-energy costs and you have a perfect storm of factors working against our historic churches.

And yet the buildings are still there. Stalwart congregations add faith to elbow grease to keep them going. Some convert into secular uses. Some are currently vacant.

How do we preserve this crucial local heritage? While we may not have a church where a future president was baptized, each of these buildings held countless weddings, funerals and services that were the glue that bound our community together over the past 150 years. The first step in trying to solve a problem is trying figure out how big it is.

That’s where the Historic Church Project starts. In 2010 I worked with my legislative aid Paul Dillon on a plan to create an inventory of all historic houses of worship in the City of Spokane. Then we had the good luck to meet a young Fairchild Air Force Base communications specialist named Adam McDaniel. McDaniel wanted to do an internship with local government so we set him to work on the project and he did the lion’s share of the work, visiting each site, gathering information, and compiling profiles. Erika Prins interviewed several pastors, included the Rev. Happy Watkins. My subsequent legislative aids, Joel Williamson and Blaine Stum also put time in on it. And then we were hit with good fortune again as Tracy Simmons and the Spokane Faith and Values site offered to take the project online.

My hope is that this modest project will bring some new appreciation some of the amazing historic churches in the city of Spokane. The next step is to help figure how we can help congregations who are struggling to maintain their buildings. If a building loses its congregation then the challenge is to at least keep an important church building intact so that it can get a new use.

This is our heritage. Let’s break out the faith and elbow grease.

More online:

• The Historic Church directory
• Interactive map of Spokane's historic churches
• Pinterest board of local historic churches
• Facebook album

What's next?

Because it's important to know the history of our city, Spokane Faith & Values will be highlighting some of Spokane's historic churches in the coming weeks.

This article was written by Spokane City Councilman Jon Snyder.