Tacoma church marked for demolition gets $500K gift with more promised if public responds
Holy Rosary Church is suddenly $500,000 closer to salvation.
That’s the amount pledged by a local charity to save the Tacoma landmark marked for demolition by the Archdiocese of Seattle. The gift has more than doubled the funds collected so far, but millions still are needed to fully restore the Catholic church.
The donor behind the gift, The Jack and Angela Connelly Family Foundation, also will match all donations up to $500,000 through Aug. 31. If the match is fully met, it would mean a total of $1.5 million to save the 99-year-old Our Lady of the Holy Rosary.
“It breaks my heart that the Archdiocese of Seattle is even considering this action,” Jack Connelly, a Tacoma attorney, said in a statement. “It is a special, beautiful, iconic church that does not need to be torn down. The loss of Holy Rosary would be a severe loss to Tacoma.”
The campaign to save the church is run by an independent non-profit, Save Tacoma’s Landmark Church. Before the Connelly announcement, the group had collected $400,000.
The Archdiocese said it will take $2 million to $2.5 million in repair work just to reopen the doors. The estimated cost to completely renovate the structure is $18 million.
The church, with its 210-foot-tall steeple at Tacoma Avenue South and South Delin Street, can be seen from Interstate 5 and much of Tacoma. It was closed just over a year ago when deterioration reached a crisis level.
After inspections and a review, then-Archbishop J. Peter Sartain decreed in August that Holy Rosary be closed and razed. In September, new Archbishop Paul Etienne put the demolition on hold in a response to the community effort to save the church.
This story was originally published December 4, 2019 at 6:10 AM.
