ST. FRANCIS — Beginning in early July, several archdiocesan offices will have a new home. The Office for Schools, Catholic Social Action/Respect Life, Office for Catechesis and Youth Ministry, Sexual Abuse Prevention and Response Services, and World Mission Ministries will move from the Archbishop Cousins Catholic Center in St. Francis, to the St. Joseph Center on Layton Boulevard in Milwaukee. The newly formed Pope John Paul II Center for Lifelong Faith and Ministry Formation will also be housed at St. Joseph Center, with several staff members relocating their offices from the Cousins Center.
Move prompted by Cousins Center sale
The move occurred as the Archdiocese of Milwaukee prepares to sell the Cousins Center. The 415,000 square foot building, which housed De Sales Preparatory Seminary from 1963 to 1979, and the accompanying 44 acres of land on Lake Drive are for sale.
These six archdiocesan offices were selected to move together due to functionality, according to Jerry Topczewski, Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan’s chief of staff.
“We started originally by talking about moving schools and John Paul II Center; we thought that was a nice combination of elementary and high school, along with lifelong faith formation, who will serve a lot of people in schools and parishes, then quickly catechetics fit into that grouping,” he said. “To be honest, sometimes it’s, ‘Who will fit?’ So you try to group people that have a natural working relationship or who would simply make sense to be there because the space was right for them.”
Randy Nohl, formerly director of Lifelong Faith Formation, is moving to St. Joseph Center. He is now director of the Emmaus Project at the John Paul II Center.
“I’m excited about moving to the new location and the John Paul II Center being new,” he said. “It’s kind of a fresh start. I think that it will be energizing. Now with people not all being at the same location, we can’t just walk down the hall to talk to someone; we may have to call or send an e-mail. We’ll have to adjust, but I think those moving feel that it will be a new venture and there is energy around that.”
Nohl said the way he and those at the John Paul II Center are looking at it is “the diocese’s offices are moving out and so are our services throughout the diocese.”
High renovation costs changed plans
Over the past several months, many offices, including the archdiocese’s central offices, were thought to be moving to Saint Francis Seminary, next door to the Cousins Center. However, due to the high cost of renovating the 150-year old seminary building, that is no longer the case, according to Topczewski.
“When we got the revised estimates from the seminary, they were still close to $10 million in the scaled down plan, which we immediately said was out of our price range,” he explained.
Topczewski said that to scale down the amount of renovation due to the high cost, they knew they would not be able to fit as many employees into the space.
“We knew right away that they can’t be in Henni Hall and the cost to renovate Meyer Hall went up from its original estimate from kind of refreshing it with new carpet and paint, to code issues, that we took those groups of people and said there’s additional space at St. Joseph Center.”
Plan hits pause button
Of the original plan to have the archdiocese’s central offices in Henni Hall at Saint Francis Seminary, Topczewski now said, “We kind of hit the pause button and said let’s make sure we’re making good business decisions administratively and using sound stewardship in the process of decision making, so that’s where we’re at.”
Due to the recent changes in future office destination, Topczewski said the timeline has also been altered.
“Originally, we hoped that we might be moving out of Cousins Center even this fall, but now that’s been delayed because of construction schedules and because new opportunities keep presenting themselves. But we couldn’t just wait and hope we could find space later,” he said. “So we leased the space (at St. Joseph Center) when we could and it’s effective July 1.”
Topczewski said the offices moving to St. Joseph Center have signed a three-year lease for the space.
“Intertwined with all this is the issue of selling Cousins Center,” he said. “And we have
received two written offers
for the property and we hope more will come in. And those offers, too, present some unique aspects of what might happen to Cousins Center and again, bring to question is there an urgency that we have to relocate as quickly as we thought.”
Topczewski declined to explain the offers in detail, citing confidentiality, but said each offer has been diverse. He also said he was unsure of the timeline by which the archdiocese would have to abide if it opts to accept or decline either offer.
“Although we want to be timely in our response, our brokers are really handling that and are in constant communication with the interested parties to keep them updated,” he said. “So we want to be expedient in making decisions, but we also want to be wise in the decisions we make. So I think that drives the timeline.”
While the archdiocese’s offices will be separated by several miles, Topczewski said there will still be camaraderie and communication between offices, but that it might take more effort than was required when all were under one roof.
New location, new perspective
“In some ways, I think it may help us because we’ll have people in a different location getting a different perspective and they’re in the heart of a heavily Catholic population and Hispanic population, so I think it will give us a different perspective on how we provide services,” he said. “Our mission at the central offices is to do everything we can to serve and support parishes, so this gets us out into being a little closer to where parishes function.”
Asked if the archdiocesan moving process is on schedule, Topczewski compared the process to the remodeling of a house — that one never knows when something that needs attention will pop up.
“When you do a house remodel, you get to a point where you think it would be nice to do things this way,” he said. “In this process, we’re not at the point of actually building walls and things, .... but people have new ideas and options that present themselves. So even our real estate brokers that are representing the archdiocese in the selling of Cousins Center continue to get creative ideas presented to them from developers or buyers because I think anyone familiar with property development, they’re limited by their own creativity and what they see as a financially feasible model.”
Sale will bring clarity
Subsequent steps, according to Topczewski, will be determined by the disposition of the Cousins Center property.
“That will answer a lot of the pending questions on what options are or are not available to us,” he said. “After that it will be to continue to work with our facilities assessment group, which continues to meet to help us in that decision-making process, to figure out which of these options presents the best opportunity to the archdiocese.”
Other offices that have already moved from the Cousins Center include the Catholic Community Foundation, which has moved to 637 E. Erie St., Milwaukee, and the National Association of Catholic Chaplains has moved to 5007 S. Howell Ave., Milwaukee. |
