Apartments planned for site of collapsed New London church

NEW LONDON, CT (WFSB) - It’s been nearly six months since the First Congregational Church of New London collapsed.

Now there are new plans to build apartments there.

Since January the church has been a pile of rocks, completely fenced off.

About two years from now we could see an apartment building with close to 50 units.

“This property will be cleaned up by the fall,” said New London Mayor Michael Passero.

Eastern Connecticut Housing Opportunities (ECHO) has agreed to buy the property for $125,000.

They’ll also take on all the debts on the property Engaging Heaven Ministry has.

The city paid close to $250,000 to clean up the property when it fell.

ECHO will pay that back too, eventually. Closing is scheduled for Tuesday.

“For the value of what ECHO plans to deliver to the city, it is a good decision to allow them the two years to pay it back,” Passero said.

“Once we clean the lot, which is in itself a lot of money, it’s going to be up to 16-24 months for us to be able to put a finance stack together to pay for the construction of the new company,” said Julie Savin, President & CEO, of Eastern Connecticut Housing Opportunities.

There are no drawings yet of what the apartments would look like. Savin said they’ll be something for the average joe.

“What we call the missing middle. There are people who don’t qualify for programs, but they don’t make enough to move into these luxury apartments being built on mass in New London,” Savin said.

“It was a tragic moment,” said Gustavo Pereira of Old Lyme.

Folks like Pereira have gotten used to the pile of rubble but remember the better days.

“I remember how beautiful it was, how gorgeous it was, the historical part of it for New London,” Pereira said.

Passero said almost immediately after the church fell, developers became interested in the property. All of them for housing.

“The city’s interest is in recovering the taxpayer money that was spent after the collapse,” said Passero.

There is still no official cause of the collapse. But there are theories.

“It sure looks to everyone like it was a flaw in the construction 250 years ago,” Passero said.

“We are all still mourning the loss of that building. You didn’t have to attend services there to miss that building and walk by it every day,” said Savin.

As you can see, there’s no shortage of this rock that the church was made from.

ECHO plans to use that same rock to build the apartment building and honor the church that stood here.