Holy Rosary's Revival

Historic Parish Gets New Life With Old Stone

By Rob Patterson

An aerial view of Houston’s Holy Rosary Catholic Church, originally built in 1933 by Fretz Construction Co. The same contractor is giving the church a $6.5 million makeover. (Photo courtesy Fretz Construction.)

Building a new 15,000-sq.-ft. parish hall and adding another 15,000 sq. ft. to the rectory of Houston's Holy Rosary Catholic Church was a labor of love and devotion for Fretz Construction Co. The church and the priory were originally built in 1933 by Fretz, whose current president, Bob Fretz Jr., is a member of the parish.

The Houston-based firm overcame a series of major hurdles to construct the $6.5 million project that began in July 2004. The steel frame structures faced with complex limestone work were designed by Marion Spears of MSA Architects Inc. of Houston, also a parish member whose primary design work is in single-family home design. Fretz took the basic plans and perfected them beyond the normal scope of a general contractor's duties. "The permitting process took nine months because the documents weren't correct, so we actually had to step in and get the drawings done ourselves because we knew what the city wanted," said Terry Smith project manager for Fretz. "We had our most experienced superintendent on the site, and he picked up on a lot of structural things that simply wouldn't work and had to be redesigned."

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Fretz' role continued to expand. Early on in the job, architect Spears left the business and closed his firm.

A nine-month permitting process meant meeting the original scheduled completion date in July of this year wouldn't be easy.

And, because of the urban church's location in Houston's thriving Midtown neighborhood, the congregation was growing and in dire need of more space to serve its members and the community.

"When I came 10 years ago, our physical office space was one room that was less than 200 sq. ft.," said Father Joseph Kunkel, the parish priest. "We realized that as the parish was reviving and more people were coming to the area, we were operating under difficult circumstances."

A two-story, 1913-vintage parish hall was demolished to make room for the new hall. "It actually had a 3-ft. below-grade basement that served as a mechanical chase that no one was aware of," Smith said. "And then underneath that we found some 12 ft. piers that we had to dig out."

The new parish hall is three stories with offices and meeting rooms on the ground level, a reception hall and kitchen on the second floor and a third-story mechanical loft. The three-story rectory addition added 10 new bedrooms and 11 bathrooms for the parish priests and Dominican order brothers who work in the community and reside in the church. The priory also boasts a new chapel and public living room, dining room, kitchen, community room and sunroom.

The new structures duplicated the original church and priory design, including the use of Indiana limestone exterior and Vermont slate roof. Masonry subcontractor Lucia Inc. of Houston was able to obtain stone from Bybee Stone Co., the site of the original quarry that provided the original 1933 materials. The intricate ornamentation required expert work from the stone subcontractor and suppliers.

"We made more than 50 plaster molds of the coping details of the existing church building and sent them to Bybee Stone in Indiana for duplicate details," Smith said.

Once work got under way, the project was six months behind schedule. "Our superintendent, Ron Slavin, made up five of those six months" through a combination of expert scheduling and coordination of subcontractors, rapid steel erection and working 10-hour days six days a week, Smith said. "We base our reputation on meeting the schedule," Smith added. "Even though we were delayed, we still wanted to see how close we could come to the original completion date." The project came online in August, just one month after the scheduled completion date.

The tight inner-city site posed further challenges. "Luckily, we had a parking lot across the street that we were able to occupy and put all of our staging on," Smith said.

Fretz also had to retrofit the existing HVAC and plumbing and install a new chiller on the third floor of the rectory. The company consolidated five gas meters and four water meters into one for each utility.

Throughout the construction process, Fretz contended with regulatory restrictions. "We had to come back in and put in an eight-hour firewall in at one location," Smith said. "So there were a lot of changes on the project even after we got involved."

Fretz successfully worked around the daily parish activities.

"It was really not as obtrusive as you think it would be," Kunkel said. "We weren't really disrupted."

Performing the job without an active project architect involved gave Smith a new-found appreciation for designers. "We always gripe at architects," he said. "But when it comes time to get something changed, you go back to them.

"Here I was moving walls, coming back and drawing it up by hand and sending it out to the subs. They were seeing something they had probably never seen - a contractor doing architectural work"

Prior to completion of the new structures, the exteriors of the church and original rectory were cleaned. Smith said the project replicates all the visuals of the 1933 building including Gothic arches and ornamental embellishments such as a fleurs-de-lis pattern.

"When you see the buildings, you would think they were designed by the original architect." Kunkel said. "The stonework is exquisite."