St. Paul’s Memorial Church – Building for the Future at UVA
- VEREP
- Aug 2
- 6 min read
Updated: Aug 20
St. Paul’s Memorial Church in Charlottesville is addressing aging facilities and growing repair needs through a bold redevelopment plan.
With guidance from parishioner input and a partnership with the UVA Foundation, St. Paul’s aims to restore its historic sanctuary, build new parish spaces, and lease office space to support its long-term mission to the University of Virginia community.
Case Study submitted by Rev. Will Peyton, St. Paul's Memorial Church, Charlottesville, VA
Location, Location, Location:
Underdeveloped Real Estate Assets Fund: Renewal of the Founding Mission at St. Paul’s Memorial Church in Charlottesville
Background
St. Paul’s Memorial Church at the University of Virginia was founded as a diocesan mission to the University in 1910, occupying a temporary wooden chapel. The present church, with seating for more than four hundred, was dedicated in 1927. The church overlooks the historic heart of the University, including Thomas Jefferson’s iconic Rotunda, directly across the street. Student-oriented shops and restaurants, numerous sorority and fraternity houses, and the offices of the President and Provost of the University are all within a few hundred yards of St. Paul’s in a dense, pedestrian-heavy environment. The church building and grounds, including a house that is leased out as office space for the University, comprise just one-and-a-third acres, bounded by city streets on three sides and a service alley on the fourth.
By the 2010’s, the historic church had aged well architecturally, but classrooms and offices were housed in outdated 1959 cinderblock additions. Throughout the old (1927) and “new” (1959) parts of the facility, every major building system—HVAC, plumbing, electrical, sewerage, roofing—was inadequate, failing, or at risk of failing. Abysmal conditions with regard to environmental sustainability and handicapped accessibility were far out of alignment with the congregation’s professed values and priorities. At the same time, issues of layout, access, and building security were constraining the parish’s impulse to hospitality, requiring St. Paul’s to say no to community meetings and events that the leadership felt called to say yes to.
Identifying the Goal
As early as 2012, a parishioner task force recognized that the layout and construction of the 1959 additions made them difficult—perhaps impossible—to renovate in a way that would serve the parish’s future needs while meeting contemporary standards for sustainability and accessibility. The task force suggested that the eventual solution would be demolition and replacement of the additions, in concert with a thorough restoration of the 1927 core. Over the next five years, the parish experienced declining attendance, declining revenues, and a rector transition. A major capital project was hard to imagine.
In 2019, with attendance and annual budgets creeping upwards, St. Paul’s undertook a parish-wide listening process to identify the community’s aspirations for the physical plant. More than two hundred parishioners answered questions like, “What kinds of ministries and activities are constrained by our current buildings?” and “What kinds of ministries and activities should our buildings support and facilitate?” Participants were encouraged to “Dream Big” in listening sessions whose theme was “No Design, No Dollars.” In other words, parishioners were asked not to offer design ideas or to think about cost, but to focus on what St. Paul’s might be called to do in its unique location in the future.
Hundreds of comments were distilled into four guiding principles and a short wish list of physical characteristics that were eventually shared with the master-plan architects:
Guiding Principles:
Welcome
Accessibility
Sustainability
Flexibility
Wish list:
A prominent, welcoming, street-level front entrance expressing openness to the public and the University, and allowing St. Paul’s to host more community events and meetings
A larger parish hall, better matched to the size of the nave
High-quality outdoor fellowship space for the parish and the neighborhood
Adjacencies and flow promoting rather than inhibiting intergenerational community
Handicapped accessibility throughout the facility, indoors and out
Out of Reach?
A detailed analysis was not necessary to conclude that fulfilling St. Paul’s wish list while honoring the guiding principles would easily cost well over ten million dollars. Although annual giving had begun to grow steadily by the end of the listening process in 2019, a capital project of that magnitude seemed out of reach. Meanwhile, the buildings and systems continued to deteriorate. Each fall, HVAC technicians warned that the mid-twentieth-century boiler was on its last legs. Much of the facility, including the parish hall, had never been equipped with air conditioning. The church went without electricity for two weeks one summer after a tree fell on power lines that the power company refused to reconnect, citing the antiquated interior wiring as a fire hazard. A crumbling sewer line threatened to force the abandonment of two bathrooms. And every heavy rain meant placing buckets and wastebaskets under the drips in the office suite. The prospect of repairing any one of multiple urgent problems would have represented a significant capital expense that would move the parish no closer to its identified goals. Piecemeal fixes seemed to point down a long, expensive path to stagnation and decline. A new and comprehensive vision was necessary.
When less costs more, and more costs less
The essential insight that broke open the future for St. Paul’s was that it would be more affordable to build excess space than to build only what the parish needed for its programs and ministries. The projected growth of the University, combined with extraordinary rates of real-estate appreciation in Charlottesville, meant that any new office or classroom space within the walking core of U.V's Central Grounds neighborhood would likely pay for itself, if only there were capital available to build it. Any church that finds itself in a location where growth and density are driving up real estate and rental values might consider a similar solution.
St. Paul’s approached the UVA Foundation, a private entity that develops and manages real estate on the University’s behalf, about a potential leasing agreement whereby high-quality office space in St. Paul’s new building would be leased to the University on a long-term basis, with the bulk of decades’ worth of rent being paid up front, providing St. Paul’s with capital for construction.
As of 2025, after several years of consultation with the Foundation, St. Paul’s is moving from the master planning phase into schematic design for a new building that will function practically as two buildings with two different entrances. Facing the street, next to St. Paul’s iconic steps and portico, will be a prominent, handicapped-accessible entrance to new space that will house church offices, meeting rooms, and a new parish hall, and connect indoors and out with the historic 1927 building. Around the corner on a side street, the same building will have a separate entrance, not marked as church property, that will lead to several thousand square feet of “trophy-class” office space.
Whereas the cost of renovating and building only what the parish wanted and needed was estimated to be well over ten million dollars, St. Paul’s now expects to fulfill its entire wish list by contributing less than ten million dollars (of which approximately seven million has already been raised or committed by the parish) to a total project cost that could exceed twenty-five million. The difference will be made up by pre-paid rent on the leased space in the new building. The lease is likely to run for thirty years or more, during which time it will be budget-neutral in terms of St. Paul’s annual operations. The lease will not generate annual revenue, but neither will construction financing require cash payments as a typical construction loan would. At the end of the lease term, St. Paul’s will have the opportunity to continue to lease the space for cash, which would represent a major windfall for the parish of the future, or to reconfigure the interior of the building and begin to occupy some or all of the leased space.
Faith in the Future
As the parish considered the prospect of such a radical transformation of its facilities, the gut-check spiritual question boiled down to, “Do we, or do we not, intend for this parish to be here as a mission to the University fifty or a hundred years from now?”
The parish took inspiration from its own history in deciding that God was indeed calling St. Paul’s to offer a gift to future generations. The rector and the leadership of the Building Committee and Campaign Committee reminded the parish of the commitment and generosity of those who funded the 1927 building, knowing that the future was uncertain, but taking a risk that turned out to be an immeasurable blessing to the parish and its ministry today.
As of 2025, the new facility is years away from completion. Innumerable design and cost decisions lie ahead, along with multiple city approval processes, and lease negotiations with the UVA Foundation. St. Paul’s remains hopeful and confident that this project will transform the parish’s relationship to the street, to the hundreds of students who walk by every day, and to the University community the church was planted to serve.
Is your congregation facing aging facilities or exploring new ways to use your property for mission? VEREP can help you take the first step toward a faithful and sustainable future.
