St. Peter's Lutheran Church receives regional funding for affordable housing
41 units to be created within St. Peters Church on Queen St. N.
A downtown Kitchener church received $8.9M of funding from the Region of Waterloo to build 41 affordable housing units.
St. Peter's Lutheran Church on Queen Street N. announced in 2022 it wanted to create 41 affordable housing units at its downtown location.
Regional Chair Karen Redman made the funding announcement Friday.
"The St. Peter's project is an innovative and important increase in affordable housing for our community," said Chair Redman.
"Thank you to our partners, including St. Peter's Church, Indwell, the Ontario Government and the City of Kitchener for ensuring that we can deliver shovel-ready projects as part of Regional Council's affordable housing plan," she said.
The project will see the church's under used classrooms and programming space turned into one bedroom and studio apartments.
'Sledgehammers are now swinging'
Pastor Mark Ehlebracht says the upgrades to the inside of the church building have already started.
"The sledgehammers are now swinging. We're essentially carving the church building proper out like an apple," said Ehlebracht.
"The sanctuary and other parts of the church building are getting retooled to be optimized and used as multi-use community gathering spaces. So of course we're still have a place to worship, but we'll also have a place for community groups to gather."
Pastor Ehlebracht says along with the Region's funding, the church has collected up to $2 million in donations from local contributions. He says the total project cost is estimated to be around $18 and $20 million.
People should be able to move in for Spring or Summer 2024.