The loss of a longtime tenant in a century-old building is leaving a small Guelph church congregation looking for a new partner to keep its doors open.
For the last eight years, the Upper Grand District School Board took up shop at 122 Harris St. – the former St. Patrick's Anglican Church and now home to the Unitarian Congregation of Guelph – using it to store items as part of an outdoor Community Environmental Leadership Program (CELP). The board is moving out in June.
"(The UGDSB) said they weren't coming back with one of their classes for the fall, and we can't continue on (in the building)," said Helen Prinold, the secretary on the Unitarian Congregation of Guelph's board of directors.
It was a perfect match. The school board would use the building on weekdays. The congregation, who owns the building, used it on weekends.
A church centred on Ethiopian immigrants rents the space Sunday mornings too.
The loss of the school board as a tenant is another blow to the congregation, which has been facing a decline in members.
At its peak, they had about 60 permanent members and another 20-40 part-timers who showed up every now and then.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, they are down to under 40 permanent members.
"You went from having 90 or 100 people supporting the church, down to 30 on Zoom," she said. "You can't really pass the collection plate around well on Zoom."
She said losing a keystone tenant, and pairing it together with a lack of people coming to the church, it's a "double whammy."
Prinold is looking to find either another church or organization to partner with them, adding the building is in a "great spot," across the street from Lyon Park and minutes from downtown.
It's also got a lengthy history.
The building has been standing since 1905, after the Anglican church first bought the property four years earlier.
After St. Patrick's closed in the late 60s, it went on the city books as being the Road Show Theatre. The YMCA took over the building in the 1980s and operated as a daycare.
It continued that way, even after the Unitarians bought the building in 1992.
The Y moved to its current location on Woodland Glen Drive in the late 90s, and after what Prinold called a "tough period" of time, the UGDSB began renting space in the early 2010s.
Now, they're in the same tough spot.
Despite its age, the building is not listed as a heritage property.
Prinold said there is interest in the congregation once again, but more time is needed to build up the membership count after the pandemic.
It's something she's not sure can be accomplished in the next few months.
"If we can't make anything happen here, we may end up looking at selling the building and moving on to another form of tenancy ourselves," she added.