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The Community Church of the Pelhams on Washington Avenue.

The historic Community Church of the Pelhams on Washington Avenue may be considering the sale of its property, following the failure of redevelopment proposals that would have allowed the church to make expensive and needed renovations.

In an email Aug. 14, the church announced it would be holding a call on Aug. 21 with William Eisenhut, a real estate broker with Cushman Wakefield in Stamford who has “experience in the marketing of church buildings in the Westchester County area.” Congregants of the church and other members of the community were invited to sign up for the call.

However, the virtual meeting was cancelled four days before it was to take place. “We will advise of a new meeting date in the future,” the church said in an email.

Church officials have not returned several calls left on the office voicemail to find out the specifics of what they might be planning.

The Community Church, a member of the United Church of Christ located at 448 Washington Ave., has struggled for several years because of the need for major renovations to its century-old building and a declining membership.

“During the past ten to 20 years, the Community Church of the Pelhams has undergone a number of changes which have required us to carefully look at what the future may hold,” said the email about the call that was cancelled. “Most significantly, the lack of preventative maintenance through the years has resulted in the deterioration of the physical structure of the beautiful building we call home. In addition, attendance and participation has fallen off dramatically such that at any Sunday worship there is generally more visitors and friends attending the worship service than members of the church.”

Since 2019, two proposed partnerships have been considered by the church to gain the funding needed to restore the structure.

In December of 2022, the Pelham Children’s Center issued a statement saying it was interestred in discussions on revitalizing the building. It envisioned a worship area for the church, a home for the Junior Wonders preschool that had operated there for a quarter century, space for the PCC’s own programming, a neighborhood playing field and dedicated facilites for use by the community, including the Boy Scouts and the Pelham Recreation Department.

Nothing was said about that outreach a year and a half ago until the church’s Aug. 14 email, which reported the PCC found “the costs went way beyond what was anticipated,” and it would only move ahead with the plan if the church transferred the property to the PCC in exchange for a long-term agreement to use space in a new building.

“The church has rejected this,” the email said.

According to PCC Board President Dan Rowoth, “Both sides worked really hard to get something worked out,” but it ultimately “didn’t culminate in a final agreement.”

He declined to comment on why acquiring the church property was a requirement in the deal.

(Junior Wonders moved out of the building last winter to another location after the furnace stopped functioning. The preschool plans to restart its daytime program next year in new space and continues to run its afterschool enrichment offering, Playful Wonders, at Siwanoy Elementary School. Other groups, including Alcoholics Anonymous, which had met in the church since 1947; the Boy Scouts and another religious congregation, also no longer use the building.)

Before the PCC effort, Michael Volpe, a former mayor of the Village of Pelham, started working with the church in 2019, producing a proposal in November 2022 to build a five-story, 30-unit apartment building on the property and renovate the church building. The rental units would have been 80% occupied by at least one individual aged 55 or older, according to the proposal. The $10 million plan also envisioned space for day-care services and 4,500-square-feet for a co-working location.

The plan drew immediate fire from the Pelhamwood neighborhood and others in the wider community. The Pelhamwood Association and a new group, Friends of Residential Pelham (which was lead by Dustin Lawlor and hasn’t been heard from since), collected 700 signatures on a petition against the development, hired an attorney and called on people to attend the Dec. 20, 2022 Village of Pelham Planning Board meeting at which the rezoning needed for the project would next be considered.

But the proposal was pulled from the board’s agenda by Volpe. Rev. Noel Vanek, who was pastor of the Community Church and had worked with Volpe on the redevelopment project, began a planned retirement just weeks later. The church has had a temporary pastor since then.

In a letter to the editor published in the Pelham Examiner at the end of that year, Volpe said, “Let’s hope that in the New Year the Community Church and the community can provide a solution to the church’s problem.”

Kiran Schwaderer and Nate Reynoso contributed to this story.

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