OK, It's Going To Be Medieval Times Without The Horses

A San Antonio visitor told me yesterday, regarding the unfinished school expansion at Our Lady of the Atonement,

The "new project" on the school is change it to an event venue... Weddings, Quiecesneras, banquets. . . you get the theme.

The explanation was the only way now to ever make a profit off this big hallow school is...EVENT VENUE TA-DA! The $4 million is to do that.. can't have an event venue with nothing but classrooms. . . well empty, unfinished classrooms. . .

This has been done, I think part of the implication from the visitor is, without any sort of announcement, parish meeting, prospectus, or anything else. However, private fundraising appeals have been made to major parish donors. Exactly how this relates to the $100,000 already registered on the fundraising thermometer at the parish billboard isn't clear. However, as far as anyone can determine, this billboard is the only public notice of the campaign.

As far as I can see, it's also disingenuous, since although the project features listed include a "multi-purpose auditorium and event venue" and "dining area with catering kitchen", the project as outlined on the billboard also includes "religious formation rooms", "additional classrooms, science labs, and computer labs". My regular correspondent thought the catering kitchen was a tipoff from the start. It sounds as though the academic facilities will be low on the list of priorities.

One question is whether this was on Fr Phillips's mind during the planning phases in 2010-14. The "meeting rooms" on the plan may always have been intended as hotel-style breakout or private function facilities. The hokey battlements on the school facade always suggested to me that somebody had Medieval Times on his mind when he dreamed the whole thing up.

Another San Antonio visitor comments,

They have pushed out fuzzy numbers about the school enrollment for so long it is hard to get a bead on what is happening. The 570 number is touted but if you look around, the real number is below 400, just how far below 400 I don’t know but I suspect it too, is dropping steadily.

They have eliminated same sex classrooms and have dropped down to only about one class per grade level. The high school population is abysmal, less than 100 for sure, maybe only 20 kids per grade. A tragedy of enormous proportions. And a very ungodlike racket it is…

So this raises entirely reasonable questions on whether the school was ever as successful as Fr Phillips and his supporters claimed, and how much the 2010-14 plans were developed to address precisely the same situation as that in which the parish finds itself in 2020, a school that's unsustainable that needs an infusion of "profit" for it and the parish to survive. Since the project as approved in 2016 was precisely an unfinished shell, it's hard to avoid thinking a follow-on project in the $3-4 million range was always in the plan to finish it out. But finish it out as what?

Let's get real for a moment. My wife and i travel to what amount to event facilities in resort areas once or twice a year (and will yet this year, if they ever let us out). These places have full time managers, salespeople, and catering staffs. You don't just have the school principal's secretary or whoever take the reservations down on her scheduler.

The first question is whether anyone, staff or volunteer, at Our Lady of the Atonement has the skills to undertake this wort of thing, and a problem I see is that given the parish history of nepotism, cronyism, kickback deals, and so forth, the parish could ever hire and retain capable people to run such an operation, especially if they have to report to or work with relatives or cronies of the ruling clique. I don't want to think about what would happen if it's run entirely by the Phillips children or those of his inner circle.

The second question is how long it will take to raise the necessary money to get started on the project, and how soon the project could realistically begin paying off, even assuming capable people are involved in the startup. Every indication is that the parish financial situation is dire, something Fr Phillips probably understood ten years ago. How much time does it have left? How much of the event venue plan is just a get-rich-quick fantasy?

The impression visitors have is that this continues to be Fr Phillips's original plan, and Fr Phillips is continuing to call the shots, notwithstanding he isn't allowed on the property and can't function as a priest there.