Financing OK’d for St. Teresa expansion

Three-story building will be added to campus

LIMERICK >> A $2.3 million expansion of St. Teresa of Calcutta church and school took a vital step forward Wednesday morning.

That’s when the Limerick Township Industrial Development Authority agreed to guarantee a $10 million borrowing by the parish for the construction of a three-story building on the Swamp Pike campus.

The first floor of the building will house four classrooms for the Catholic school’s junior high school students, now housed in two modular classrooms on the site, according to the Rev. Paul Brandt.

The second and third floor of the building, called a “ministry center,” will hold meeting space and offices, said Brandt.

The approval by the authority, which also held its re-organizational meeting Wednesday morning, essentially guarantees a bank loan and would only affect

the public entity should the church default on its payments.

Brandt explained that the majority of the loan will re-finance a previous 2008 loan from Santander Bank for a new one through Univest Bank.

Brandt and Limerick Township Manager Dan Kerr both said the ministry center has always been part of the plan for the campus, the development of which has already been approved by the township when the original church and school were built.

“This is the final phase of our campus plan,” said Brandt.

Currently, the school at St. Teresa educates 275 students in grades kindergarten through eighth grade.

DIGITAL FIRST MEDIA FILE PHOTO St. Teresa of Calcutta Roman Catholic Church in Limerick.

DIGITAL FIRST MEDIA FILE PHOTO St. Teresa of Calcutta School in Limerick.The additional four junior high classrooms in the ministry center will provide capacity for as many as 350 students, said Brandt.Construction is scheduled to begin in the spring, he said.