HALLOWELL, Maine — For the Rev. Susan Reisert, a church is more than a building.
She and her congregation have come to peace with that as they prepare to part ways with the Old South Congregational Church. The grand structure built with Hallowell granite and vibrant stained glass windows came after an 1878 fire destroyed the wooden church preceding it.
After nearly 150 years, hard conversations about a diminishing congregation that has halved to around 60 since Reisert first joined the church in 2005 and the rising cost of utilities, the church listed the building for sale last January with plans to shift services to the nearby parish hall.
“This helps them connect to their faith, to their sense of who and what God is,” Reisert said of the building. “But over time, I think it’s morphed to people feeling that connection in community and not so much in a structure. So when the building starts to feel like a burden, you want to try to find a way to not have that burden.”
Maine has long ranked among the nation’s least religious states, leading grand churches to go on the market over the past two decades. They often are in prime locations that are being prioritized by cities and towns grappling with a historic housing crunch.
They also come with major challenges that Old South embodies. Its stone structure makes it almost impossible to reconfigure for housing. It also comes with major accessibility issues, as it is built on a hill at a time when people walked to church. Almost nobody does now, and there are only two dedicated parking spots on the lot.
Last year in Saco, retired construction company owner Bob Gaudreau converted a former Catholic church that was deconsecrated in 2004 into 80 units of housing. He said he wouldn’t even think about redeveloping a stone church because of the physical hurdles.
There is also the added problem of community opposition to emotionally fraught conversions, which usually require zoning changes to move forward. That’s what happened in Augusta last year, when resident backlash killed a plan to convert a Methodist church building into a homeless shelter.
“That is time and expense and a hassle — especially if it’s owned by a congregation or someone with limited resources — all for the public to not approve of it,” James Rather, director of strategic initiatives at the Southern Maine Planning and Development Commission, said.
There are five historic churches in Hallowell’s downtown core. Two of them have already been converted to other uses. In 2022, Reisert said Old South paid nearly $12,000 in utility costs alone to maintain their sanctuary, which is also plagued by structural issues like crumbling plaster with dehumidifiers running around the clock to keep mold out of the basement.
In other parts of Maine, there are many examples of church conversions over the past decade. One church building in neighboring Augusta is now a community center, while the former St. Mark’s Episcopal Church will be a community event space. Parking constraints continue to pose an obstacle to redevelopment, Keith Luke, the city’s economic development director said.
At Old South, the best-case scenario is that it becomes a performing arts center, which is the use that some prospective buyers have examined there in the past year. Its sloped floor and location far from city services make it impractical for other uses, Reisert said.
The transition will be one of mixed emotions. Many of Old South’s congregants, some who now drive over from as far as the Waldo County town of Palermo, got married or baptised here and don’t want to see its purpose changed. But others are excited to be able to recoup some money to renovate their parish office and perform community service projects instead.
“We want to move into the next realm of what this church is,” Reisert said. “Really, all we’re doing is maintaining a museum.”