| Cape Cod Times
SANDWICH — Work on restoring First Church Sandwich has been going on for a little over a year, but advocates are still working out how to fully finance the project.
Despite using existing funds, most of which have been donated by members of the 174-year-old church, the question remains as to how the entire residing of the church’s aging and deteriorating exterior walls will be paid for.
Church members first went to the Community Preservation Committee at the beginning of the month with an application requesting $502,408 in Community Preservation Act funds. But the committee was concerned about committing that much funding to the project, according to Mark Romanowicz, a member of the First Church congregation and an engineer working on the project.
“We’ve had our ups and downs with the church,” he said.
In 2018, Town Meeting approved reducing the surcharge associated with the town’s Community Preservation Act from 3% to 2% to offset the additional 2% water-related surcharge to fund the town’s Comprehensive Water Resources Management Plan.
The Community Preservation Committee, which oversees how the town’s annual allotment of Community Preservation Act funds are spent, also has a number of debt payments for larger projects that were approved in the past five years, Town Planner Leanne Drake said.
The committee has still not voted on the application, Drake said. The church is also filing to have an historic preservation restriction placed on the property, she wrote by email to the Times.
Many towns, including Sandwich, require a Preservation Restriction when any amount of CPA funds are awarded for rehabilitation or restoration of an historic property, according to the Cape Cod Commission. This protects the town’s investment should the property change hands or become subject to additional development pressures.
While waiting for the restriction to be approved, the Church has decided to remove the residing component of the restoration and will return to the Community Preservation Committee with a smaller request, Romanowicz said.
The new application seeks just over $300,000 to cover the cost of restoring the church’s sanctuary, belfry and steeple support system and a portion of the belfry roof, Romanowicz said.
The Community Preservation Committee will not be voting on the application until the restriction is fully executed, Drake said. The committee is expecting to get an update from the church on the status of the application at its next meeting on March 1.
The church is undergoing its largest renovation and restoration since the congregation added classrooms and office in 1985, Romanowicz previously told the Times.
Work on the church began in January 2020, when water stains were found on the ceiling and it was found that ceiling joints were disconnected. From there, Romanowicz said, one thing led to the next.
Work has been done to stop the leaking from the steeple, but there is still structural work that needs to be done inside to secure it, Romanowicz said.
Church members decided to also look at the front of the building. The wood on the outside of the church has been deteriorating and has required a new paint job every two to three years, costing between $20,000 and $25,000, a cost they cannot maintain.
The cellular PVC siding, which was approved by the Sandwich Historic District Committee in November, would need a paint job only every 15 to 20 years. Cellular PVC, a material that emulates wood but is made out of synthetic material, is designed to withstand the harsh weather conditions here on the Cape better than wood materials.
The siding still needs approval from the Sandwich Historical Commission, Romanowicz said. The church will file again with the commission this fall and will showcase the cellular PVC along with some alternatives, such as some wood products that tend to be the preferred material from historic commissions, he said.
“We’ve been very fortunate with generous church members and we are … really thankful for all the guidance that the Sandwich Historic Commission has provided,” Rev. Tina Walker-Morin of the First Church of Christ said last week.
The congregation hopes to continue to work with the town and is open to contributions from outside sources, Walker-Morin said.
Although Walker-Morin has been forced to conduct her sermons virtually throughout the winter, she hopes her sanctuary and the COVID-19 pandemic will be in a place to allow her to resume worship inside by the spring.
“I am so thankful to be part of a great town and a great community that has been supportive of the church for a long, long time,” she said.
Contact Beth Treffeisen at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @BTreffeisenCCT.
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