Here’s a number that has weighed on the minds of Episcopal leaders in the Diocese of Pennsylvania and on the budgets of some of the diocese’s 136 congregations: 2.5 million.
That is how much space in square feet the diocese determined was underutilized across all its church properties, many of them more than 100 years old and bearing high maintenance costs.
For years under Bishop Daniel Gutiérrez leadership, the diocese has sought ways to reimagine and revive that space for new cost-effective uses. It is now acting on a plan, dubbed the Transformation Initiative, that could add more than 1,000 housing units to church properties through a new partnership with the Michaels Organization, one of the United States’ largest developers of multifamily housing. To read more, click here
