[MassHistPres] Insurance for churches

[Ralph Slate]

Below is a question that someone asked of me. I have no experience in this, can anyone offer any feedback?

Thanks, 

Ralph Slate
Springfield, MA

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I have a couple questions for you in regard to the Springfield Historic Commission.  I am currently a member of the board of trustees for Trinity United Methodist Church.  Recently, we have been reviewing our insurance policy to try to make sure it is adequate for us to preserve our building should something happen.  One of our biggest risks/concerns is that if there was an event, correcting the problem would trigger mandatory updates to other parts of the building.  For example, if there was a fire in the kitchen, because fixing it would be above a certain threshold price, we would be required to bring the entire building up to code.  Unfortunately, our insurance requires that the facility be returned to its prior functionality.  This could mean that if upgrades are cost prohibitive, the insurance company could opt to demolish the building and construct a new one.  Obviously, we don't want this to happen.

So, my question is would it be possible for Trinity to be declared a Historic District and if it was declared a Historic District, would this offer us some protection?  By protection, ideally, we would like relief from cost prohibitive upgrades unrelated to any damage being fixed if this means preserving the building.  We don't want something like a kitchen fire in the far end of our building triggering a process where we are tearing down the whole thing.  Another option is this would force our insurance carrier to do the right thing.  The downside of this is we don't want to get stuck in a long protracted battle with our carrier.

Unfortunately, we are required to buy our insurance as a group through the United Methodist Conference, so we are stuck with a one size fits all kind of insurance plan.  We are working through the conference to try to be properly insured, but this is going slowly at best.