Cell tower deal offers ‘new lease on life’ for parish in need

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PROVIDENCE — High above the roof of St. Michael the Archangel Church, about four feet down from the top of the church tower, a series of small metal boxes have been painted red to match the surrounding brick. While most passersby wouldn’t notice the boxes, they serve a vital function for both the church and the local community. The box-like objects house cell tower equipment, and for 24 hours a day, they receive and send out signals from the neighborhood’s cell phones while earning income for the parish from the companies that pay to place the equipment there.

According to Pastor Father Robert Perron, the cell equipment has been located in the church tower for about 10 years, where it has earned rental income from monthly agreements with T-Mobile and Sprint. Last fall, a deal with Massachusetts-based telecommunications company Blue Sky replaced that monthly income with a one-time, seven-figure payment in exchange for a 20-year easement on the church’s cell tower site. The tower and cell equipment, now managed by Blue Sky, offer a nontraditional supplement to the parish’s other forms of regular income.

“It’s a revenue stream that you know,” said Father Perron. “Instead of saying, ‘It’s too bad we don’t have enough in the collection,’ why not get something out of the tower that’s there?”

While leasing space in the church tower to telecommunications companies may not be a traditional source of income, it’s also not uncommon. According to Michael Sabatino, chief financial officer for the diocese, about a third of Catholic parishes in Rhode Island house cell equipment in their church towers and have entered into rental agreements. The practice has been around since the late 90s, when companies began looking to existing structures to help meet demand for mobile network coverage in busy areas.

“It’s been a real positive for us and for many other church organizations,” said Sabatino. “It’s been a supplemental source of income.”

For most of those churches, the supplemental income takes the form of monthly rental agreements with individual cell companies, like St. Michael’s previously had with T-Mobile and Sprint. However, that model is beginning to change. Two other parishes in the diocese, St. John the Baptist, Pawtucket, and Blessed Sacrament, Providence, have already entered into one-time agreements with Blue Sky, and other parishes have been approached about the possibility. According to Sabatino, the benefits of a monthly rental agreement versus a 20-year lease are relative depending on the needs of the parish.

“One of the challenges the parishes do have that enter into these [long-term] agreements is they no longer have these monthly rental agreements,” he explained.

Under the new agreement at St. Michael’s, the parish received an up-front payment from Blue Sky and will also receive 50 percent of the revenue from any new monthly agreements the company enters into while managing the church’s cell tower site. In exchange, the company took over the management and income of all existing monthly rental agreements. The new model offers cash up front and takes the burden of managing the cell tower site off the parish, but means the budget can no longer count on future monthly payments.

“For some parishes, it’s the right thing to do, especially if they have significant debts to pay down,” said Sabatino. “I don’t think there’s a right way or wrong way, it depends on the particular situation.”

At St. Michael’s, debt was a motivating factor in entering into the new agreement. The South Providence parish had a longstanding debt with the Diocese of Providence that it was able to pay off with the influx of one-time cash. With the debt paid, the parish can now focus on more immediate needs, like replacing the rectory’s 100-year-old boiler.

“Having done that, we have a new lease on life,” said Father Perron. “That debt at St. Michael’s has been there for 25 years.”

For a parish that has historically served a low-income, largely immigrant community, a “new lease” is no small matter. Many of the church’s newest parishioners are natives of African countries or Haiti, and the parish continues to serve Hmong parishioners, many of whom immigrated to Providence from Laos in the 1980s, as well as a large Latino community. Most of the church’s original Irish-American parishioners moved out of South Providence during the twentieth century, but, according to Father Perron, some still travel from the surrounding suburbs, as far away as Jamestown, to attend Mass.

“When we do festivals, we do Mass in six languages,” he said.

While some parishioners had questions about the details of the new deal, Father Perron said the church was able to overcome any resistance to the nontraditional source of income by keeping parishioners informed and meeting regularly to discuss the church’s financial situation. Being open about the church’s needs, he said, is important in helping parishioners become more invested in their church.

“A lot of people, their faith lives don’t connect with their monetary life,” he said. “It’s really putting faith in a monetary reality.”