This wire story says that when the closed churches in Boston are sold off, they will be sold for big bucks after being converted to condos. I’m skeptical. I think the trendiness will quickly fade after the first few conversions. How many church-condos are people willing to buy? There’s got to be a limited market of people willing to buy such units.
On the other hand, I expect the rectories to quickly convert and sell. Most rectories over a certain age are very large buildings, built to house a half-dozen priests at least. Our own parish of immaculate Conception in Salem would make at least four very nice condos and eight smaller ones. (The pastor and I speculated on it once.) I expect that apart from the rectories, many of the churches will be torn down for new uses, unless of course certain towns go ahead with their punitive re-zoning plans , in which they will lie empty and unused, dragging down their neighborhoods as they decay.
A co-worker and I were discussing this article yesterday, and he said he had been to a bar that had once been a church (he didn’t know what denomination). But the thing is they had kept some of the architectural features of the church. The stained glass windows were still there, and there was like a second-floor walkway added to the building post-conversion and it meant you could get REALLY close to the glass images. Some of the pews were still in place also (those near the walls, just for seating space). According to my colleague, who is not religious but I suspect I would agree anyway, the place had enough of a church aura left that it felt kind of creepy as a bar.
General point being: I wonder how they can respect some of these buildings architecturally (assuming they have value of that sort) and still convert them into something commercially viable.