Burned Bend church cleared to reopen
Published 12:00 am Wednesday, January 8, 2014
- Rob Kerr / The BulletinBend's Trinity Episcopal Church adjacent to St. Helens Hall is still in its renovation stage with construction expected to increase in a couple of weeks.
Ten months after arson fires tore through Trinity Episcopal Church near downtown Bend, the congregation is set to move back in to its fully repaired church.
The March 6 fires torched both the historic church building on Wall Street and St. Helens Hall, a former Lutheran church located next door that Trinity Episcopal purchased in 2004.
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Since then, the church has held services off site, primarily at the St. Francis of Assisi Historic Catholic Church on Franklin Avenue. On Jan. 19, the congregation will hold its first services at a rebuilt St. Helens Hall.
The city did its final inspection of the building Tuesday morning, and within hours church members had arrived to start moving a truck full of new chairs inside.
Though the renovation looks complete at first glance, Senior Warden Pete Lovering said there’s still a lot of small projects that need to be completed before the 19th, including fine-tuning the sound system, installing kickplates on doors, and swapping out the white light switch covers for an almond shade. Later this week, the organ and altar will arrive.
Lovering said the space should feel familiar for members of the church, though nearly every visible element inside the building has been replaced.
What wasn’t burned at St. Helens Hall was severely smoke-damaged, Lovering said. Contractors completely rebuilt the roof and replaced all of the drywall. Lovering, who spent his career in construction, said even elements he didn’t know could be susceptible to smoke damage — like metal doors and porcelain fixtures in the restrooms — were deemed too damaged to clean up and keep.
“The whole process was really very interesting; I learned a lot about fire I never knew before,” he said.
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Lovering said members of the church are excited to move into the new facility. St. Francis never quite felt right, he said, though the church is extremely thankful for its temporary home over the last several months.
“The Catholic church has been wonderfully generous in allowing us the use of their space and allowing us to have services every week. They’ve been really good,” he said.
The first services on Jan. 19 will be followed by a more formal dedication ceremony planned for Feb. 2 at St. Helens Hall. The bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Eastern Oregon will visit to consecrate the altar, and the congregation has invited all of the firefighters and police who responded on the night of the fires.
Across the street at the Trinity Episcopal Church building, progress has stalled since last summer. As was the case at St. Helens Hall, the building was stripped down to the studs, but designing the renovation has dragged on. Three separate buildings constructed in 1918, 1929 and 1958 were tied together to create Trinity Episcopal as it existed before the fires, Lovering said, and it’s been difficult to figure out how to bring it all up to code.
Lovering said crews are scheduled to dig up some concrete slabs and a wheelchair ramp that need to be removed before the rebuilding can start within two to three weeks, but it could still be another year until the congregation can move back in to the church.
Bend Police Lt. Kurt Koester said the investigation into the fires at the church buildings, as well as two cars, two garages and a wood pile lit on fire nearby on the same night has failed to identify any suspects.
— Reporter: 541-383-0387, shammers@bendbulletin.com