Saint Bernard Parish in Redfield to expand campus
By Shiloh Appel
The current St. Bernard Parish in Redfield, built in 1909, has more than 100 years of history to it’s name. Not a lot has changed about the layout of St. Bernard’s campus over the decades. Vehicles park all along the streets in front of the church every Sunday for Mass and parishioners make the sometimes lengthy walk from their vehicles to the church’s doors. However, that is about to change. Over the past two years, church council members and Fr. Tom Anderson have made plans to expand the church campus and create more parking and handicap accessibility for its roughly 350 parishioners. A new rectory is also in the plans in order to provide a more accessible one-level building for future priests.
Recently, Fr. Tom Anderson and Saint Bernard’s Pastoral Council Members held a number of church meetings in August of this year to inform parishioners of the new changes that may start as early as April of 2020.
“On some level, it has been in the planning process for 20 years, depending on how you look at it,” said Anderson. “There have been a lot of different priests trying to figure out how to do this. But as far as some of these actual plans, they have been about two years in the making.”
Anderson, who has been the parish priest for just over two years, said that the Pastoral Council Members had already been talking about replacing the rectory before he arrived in Redfield. (Members include Adam Hansen, Hugh Mack, Doug Fink,Tammy Suchor, Mike Jungwirth, Rich Osborn, Joe Keller, Janet Eaton, Rich Gruenwald, Heidi Appel, Kelly Hyke, Doug Lemmer, Monte Mason, Tracey Millar, and Angela Weller.)
“But at the time, the conversation was about having the new rectory in the same location. It would have been located in exactly the same place,” said Anderson. “So I just took a couple years to think about whether we really needed a new rectory or not. The answer is ‘yes’, but I took a couple years just to figure that out to make sure it wasn’t just decided on on a whim.”
After the church connected with Co-op Architecture in Aberdeen, new ideas were brought to the table. Fr. Anderson and the church council laid out the problems they were facing and the things they wanted to accomplish and Co-op Architecture came up with a layout plan.
“Here, we have some of our parishioners that are older and would like to be able to come, but they have a choice of going up a lot of stairs, which is challenging in it’s own right, or taking a long walk to get up to the back area where the ramp is. This has been a problem for a very long time, trying to figure out how to make the church a little more accessible for people,” said Anderson. “It is compounded by the fact that there just isn’t much parking along here. You may be able to fit a few people who are handicap parking along here, but if there is any more than a few, who knows how far away they may be parking….Co-op Architecture surprised us with some very —I thought —creative ways of looking at it.”
When the house just north of St. Bernard’s became available, the church purchased the house and lot. Instead of building the new rectory in the same location, plans were made to have the new rectory built on the newly-purchased lot.
According to Anderson, breaking ground for the new rectory may be as early as May of 2020, or even April. The completion of the new rectory is planned to take place sometime in the late summer. Meanwhile, the current rectory will be offered to anyone who will pay to take it off the property.
“Maybe there will be a family who will want to get a really good deal on a house. It is beautiful and there is a lot to love in that old rectory, so maybe somebody will want that,” said Anderson.
As for the lot where the old rectory is currently located, that will be turned into a parking lot along with the current location of the Mary Garden just west of the church. The Mary Garden, in turn, will be moved directly across the street to the south and nestled on another plot of land purchased by the church.
So far, the moving of the Mary Garden has been the only change that has raised concerns among parishioners. The garden encompasses a life-size shrine of Mary, which, according to church documents, was sculpted out of white Carrara marble obtained from the same quarry in which Michelangelo obtained marble for the Pieta. To some parishioners, moving the statue from its current location is considered sacrilegious. To others, the new plot of land just doesn’t seem like it will do it justice. However, Anderson said he hopes to make the new location of the Mary Garden just as nice as its current location.
“Right now, they look out at it and they see it a certain way. It won’t look that way when it is all done, but that is the way they see it now. It gives us an opportunity to think through it again,” said Anderson, referring to the new lot where the Mary Garden will be placed. “Somebody recently suggested an awesome idea, I thought. They suggested putting some mostly-grown evergreen trees or something behind there to give it a backdrop and I thought that would be very classy looking. We want to make it feel like the Mary Garden has it’s own place and it feels like it works there. In order to do so, that may mean really working on the landscape around it to put it in its context, if you will.”
The relocation of the Mary Garden, creation of the new parking lot on the corner of 2nd Street East and 6th Avenue East, building of the new rectory on the north lot, and creation of a new parking lot at the current rectory location all fall within phases 1, 2 and 3 of St. Bernard’s five-year master plan. According to Anderson, the church hopes that the Mary Garden will be moved as soon as next summer, but it may be the summer of 2021 or 2022.
In the 30-year plan for St. Bernard’s campus are phases 4 and 5. Phase 4 would include the construction of a new Parish Fellowship Hall designed to accommodate a minimum of 250 people (the current one can fit about 150 people), storage room, library, conference room, restrooms, janitorial closets, mechanical room, 11 offices, kitchen, seven classrooms, a resource classroom, and a media wall. Phase 5 would include more parking expansion to the south of 6th Avenue East as more properties become available for purchase by the church.
“This is really a dream more than what we think will happen. It is more like a possibility. When you are looking 30 years down the way, there is so much that could happen before then… But this is one way that it might work out,” said Anderson. “We don’t really know that we are going to build a new parish hall, but the way this is laid out, it gives us that option. It would be a little bit wider, and also built in such a way where it would hook right on to the church.”
The cost for St. Bernard’s five-year expansion plan is $550,000. The church has started a capital campaign to raise $400,000 through donations from parishioners. The rest would come out of the church’s savings.
“We asked the parishioners to make a pledge of a certain amount over the next three to five years. The response of our parishioners has been phenomenal. I was really worried concerning our farm economy right now - how things would go. But we are at about $300,000 in pledges right now, and that is before the crops have all been gotten out of the ground,” said Anderson. According to Anderson, All Saints Catholic Church in Mellette will also be contributing to the Capital Campaign for the new rectory.
Meanwhile, as St.Bernard’s awaits spring and all of the changes that will come with it, parishioners will continue to share the school parking lot and park along the street, as they always have.
“I just want to say thank you for the generosity of the people here. In the midst of a very tough year, they have stepped up to make sure people can get to Mass easily,” said Anderson.
