By B.C. Manion
Work is expected to begin this summer to give the congregation of St. Peter the Apostle a more permanent place to worship.
“Our community started about 3 ½ years ago,” said the Rev. Dennis Hughes. “Initially, we met at the funeral home chapel at Trinity Memorial Gardens.”
About two years ago, the church moved to its current location in the Trinity Village shopping center — between a Cold Stone Creamery ice cream shop and a Five Guys restaurant.
The parish for St. Peter the Apostle Catholic Church, which is art of the Diocese of St. Petersburg, was carved out of the parish boundaries of St. Thomas Aquinas in New Port Richey and Our Lady of the Rosary in Land O’ Lakes.
The parish was initiated in response to the area’s growth.
“If you can remember back 4, 4 1/2 years ago before the collapse of the housing industry, this area was expanding rapidly. The diocese was looking at opening several parishes. This was going to be the first. I was named pastor here.
“We started celebrating mass 3 1/2 years ago, and almost immediately, the economy went into freefall.”
The membership of St. Peter the Apostle now includes about 440 households and is expected to continue to grow, Hughes said.
If all goes as planned, construction on the new $1.9 million multi-purpose center will begin this summer, the pastor said. A church will likely follow some day, but that won’t be until the multi-purpose center is paid off and much of the funding for a church building has been raised, he added.
The new building will be constructed on a 40-acre tract that sits between Trinity Memorial Gardens and Odessa Elementary, Hughes said. Trinity Memorial Gardens is right off SR 54 at Community Drive.
Plans call for a simple, concrete block building. It will have a small chapel and some office space, but the bulk of the new center will be a big empty hall.
“The main hall will be about the dimensions of a basketball court,” Hughes said. It will have portable partitions that can be use to configure space for various uses.
Hughes does not envision using the center for wedding receptions, but he said it could be a venue for dinners — provided the event could be set up and broken down without interfering with worship services.
The church hopes to have its construction plans ready to seek permits from the county by the end of July.
“We’re not going to touch any of the wetlands, so fortunately, we don’t have to worry about mitigation. But we do have to fit within the drainage plan — the overall drainage plan of the Trinity area,” Hughes said.
“I’m hopeful that the county will expedite the construction process as this certainly brings some much-needed construction and jobs to the county,” the pastor said.
The project is coming at a favorable time, in terms of costs, he added.
“Construction costs right now are as low as they have been in about 10 years. Concrete and steel had elevated every construction project. The worldwide slowdown in construction has brought the prices back up to more affordable levels.”
Barring unforeseen delays, Hughes expects the parish to begin using the new facility by the end of next year.
“By Christmas of next year — that should be a slam dunk. Hopefully, it will be several months earlier.”
With its new quarters, Hughes expects the congregation to grow.
“When we were in the funeral home, there were some who were reluctant to come to a funeral home chapel for mass. There are people, I suspect, who are reluctant to come to mass as a storefront.”
Regardless of where the congregation meets, though, Hughes noted: “It’s the same mass.”
“What I told this community from the beginning is that we’re the church.
“That’s why we chose the theme for our campaign, which is “Built of Living Stones.”
“We’re the stones.”
For more information about the church, visit www.sptatrinity.org or call (727) 264-8968.
