Northampton completes purchase of First Baptist Church from Eric Suher

Northampton officials acquired a longtime-vacant downtown church from businessman Eric Suher on Thursday, delivering the city a facility for a new social services hub that had lacked a permanent home.

The former First Baptist Church, on the corner of Main and West streets, will house the proposed Community Resilience Hub, a central location for service providers to help people who are homeless, in extreme poverty or facing similar crises.

“It’s a win-win on so many levels,” City Council President James Nash said over the phone. “We’ll have this landing spot for folks who need services. They can go there and get the services they need.”

Suher purchased the church in 1993 for $125,000. For years, he discussed plans to convert the nearly century-old building into an event hall and performance space.

• Read more: This is what Eric Suher owns in Northampton — a lot of it is vacant or inactive

But despite extensive renovations, the project never came to fruition and the church sat unused.

In December 2022, Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra reached terms with Suher giving the city the option to purchase the property at 298 Main St. City officials then spent much of the winter and spring reviewing the 14,500-square-foot facility.

The mayor exercised the option last month, and officials closed on the deal on Thursday, according to documents filed with the Hampshire County Registry of Deeds. The final sale price was $3.175 million. The property is assessed at $707,000, according to the city assessor’s office.

At the Resilience Hub, charitable organizations will have a kitchen from which to serve meals, there will be showers and phone charging stations, and in times of sweltering heat or deadly cold, the building can act as an emergency shelter.

The church will also be home to the city’s Division of Community Care, a burgeoning response team intended to absorb calls for mental health crises, substance abuse and other social services — calls that may typically be thrown to the police.

The church was one of the first buildings Suher bought in Northampton. Today, his real estate empire in the city is assessed at over $37 million and includes several of the downtown’s most notable buildings.

Exactly how much money Suher spent restoring the church over the last three decades is unclear.

In 2006, he estimated the costs for a thorough interior renovation to hit $585,000, according to records kept by the Northampton Building Department. Two years later, Suher placed the projected expenses at nearly $1 million.

• Read more: Eric Suher agrees to return stained glass and radiators to First Baptist Church, ahead of sale to Northampton

Sciarra said the building’s renovations are mostly completed. But she and other City Hall officials are unsure exactly how much the remaining work will cost.

As recently as 2019, the estimated price tag for the remaining work was listed at $275,000, according to building department records. But it is unclear how much work Suher’s contractors performed on the church after 2019, and inflation has pushed the costs of basic construction materials far higher than they were four years ago.

“It’s really beautiful,” Sciarra said of the church. “And it just needs finishing, essentially.”

Suher agreed last month to return more than 70 stained glass windows to the church that were removed during the renovations, according to documents on file with the Registry of Deeds. He will also return historic radiators that were once part of the building’s heating system.

Unrelated to the church sale, Suher faced pressure from the city License Commission this spring to reopen five shuttered music and nightlife venues he owns in downtown Northampton — the Iron Horse Music Hall, Pearl Street Nightclub, Calvin Theater, Basement nightclub and Green Room cocktail bar.

The church sale comes about a month after he reached a settlement with the commission to revive the five businesses. By Sept. 29, Suher must reopen the venues, sell their liquor licenses or forfeit the permits.