2105 State Street.
The halls of the two-story brick building at 2105 State St. in Hamden will once again be filled with students and Christian congregants after the Christian academy that once occupied it closed its doors two years ago. “A Church for the City” is moving … to the suburbs.
At the beginning of February, the church, Una Iglesia para la Ciudad, a Pentecostal congregation in New Haven’s Fair Haven neighborhood, closed a deal to buy the Hamden property for $1.65 million from West Woods Bible Chapel, its previous owner. The chapel bought the building in 1997, and ran the West Woods Christian Academy there until the end of the 2017 – 2018 school year, when the school closed.
The Fair Haven church plans to make the property its new home, with a school and other community services in the existing building, and with the actual church services in a new construction planned on another part of the parcel.
Una Iglesia para la Ciudad, formerly known as Iglesia de Dios Pentecostal, currently occupies a 149-year-old gothic church building at 97 E. Pearl St in New Haven. It moved into the building, a former Methodist church, in 2009, and spent a significant amount of time and money fixing it up. Iglesia de Dios Pentecostal made headlines in 2017 when it opened its doors as a sanctuary for undocumented immigrants facing deportation (read about that here and here). Over the last eleven years, its congregation has grown, said Pastor Hector Otero. The brick Victorian Gothic relic is not big enough to house the programs that Otero’s congregation hopes to offer.
“We can’t develop our ministry at the level that we want to,” said Otero.
Otero told the Independent that the church started searching for a new home last year. He said it looked in New Haven initially, but couldn’t find anything that would suit. He said the church settled on the State Street property at the beginning of the fall.
Christopher Peak Photo
Pastor Hector Otero.
“We want to give life to the building,” Otero said of his congregation’s future home. “The people know something [will] happen in that building, and it’s important to us right now to start moving our operation.”
That move will start with a music school, he said.
Otero said the church hopes to open its music school in Hamden in the next three months. The church currently runs weekly music classes, he said, but with the help of more space, it plans to expand its offerings. He said the church currently offers instruction in drums, bass, and keyboard, but hopes to add guitar (both electric and acoustic), trumpet, saxophone, piano, and other instruments. He said he is hoping to partner with businesses in the area to develop a scholarship program for students who couldn’t afford the classes otherwise.
Next will come the daycare. He said the church would partner with one of its congregants to open a daycare in the building.
After the daycare will come the school. Otero said the church plans to start pre-K‑2 classes in the fall of 2021. Each year, the school will add another grade until it eventually becomes a pre-K‑6 religious school.
Otero said the building will also house a counseling center. He said the church has been talking to counseling professionals in the area.
The property currently houses only the school building. There are no lofty gothic arches or pews to house the congregation’s prayer services, though the church plans to eventually move its entire operation there. That, said Otero, will require building a new church on the property. He said the congregation is fundraising to build a new $1.5 million church that will sit behind the existing building.
Nicolás Medina Mora Pérez Photo
Una Iglesia para la Ciudad’s current home in Fair Haven.
Otero said his congregation is working with an engineer and architect to develop a plan for the new church that conforms to Hamden’s zoning regulations.
Otero said he is not yet sure what the ministry will do with its current home. He said he is not worried about uprooting the community because the new location is not far from the current one, and because the congregation’s membership is not limited to Fair Haven, but rather draws from the entire New Haven area, and even from as far as Hartford. He said the move would also give the church an opportunity to expand its ministry in Hamden and other nearby towns.
Otero said the church has a relationship with New Haven Public Schools and with the city, and that “now we need to build that relationship with Hamden.”