The sparks fluttered in the air like violent confetti, propelled skyward by the breath of the blaze below. As the four-alarm fire raged inside the former St. Liborius Catholic Church late on the night of June 28, it punched out windows, tore through the building’s innards, and swallowed the roof, leaving a hellish maw that spit fury into the St. Louis Place neighborhood in North City.
Standing across the street, near the intersection of Hogan and North Market, Dave Blum watched years of toil turn to ash and rubble. More than a decade earlier, Blum and several partners assumed ownership of the old church, working tirelessly to transform it into a one-of-a-kind skate park called Sk8 Liborius. But on this summer night, Blum stood in awe and tried to appreciate the haunting grandeur of the scene unfolding before him.
Get a fresh take on the day’s top news
Subscribe to the St. Louis Daily newsletter for a smart, succinct guide to local news from award-winning journalists Sarah Fenske and Ryan Krull.
“I know it sounds weird,” Blum says, “but it was a spectacular thing to watch a building this size completely engulfed in flames. Crazy.”
That’s the way Blum’s mind works. He has always looked for beauty in decay. It’s what brought him to the crumbling church in the first place. Today, it’s a task that has never felt more urgent. The fire may have destroyed Sk8 Liborius, but the mess of wreckage is not derailing Blum and his partners from their mission of providing a community hub in a part of the region so often overlooked. So now what? Blum has the answer. Sk8 Liborius, Blum vows, isn’t going anywhere.
“The whole reason we did this is to help kids in St. Louis and help our community,” Blum says. “We don’t help them by just leaving another burned-down, abandoned shell. That would send a terrible message to kids, like, Hey man, if you’re working on something and it goes sideways on you, f— it. Walk away and do something else. There’s no way I’m going to just be like, Well, bye! It’s a weird symptom of our culture that everything is disposable.”
To learn about upcoming fundraisers and discover ways to donate, follow @Sk8Liborius on Instagram.
Soon, an engineering assessment will reveal to Sk8 Liborius’ board members which parts of the church, if any, can be saved and reconstructed. The crew is also hosting a design charrette to encourage local creatives to imagine how St. Liborius 2.0 might look. Most important, they’re asking for donations, large and small, to help the mission move forward.
“We’re doing tons of fundraising,” says co-founder Bryan Bedwell. “That’s our main thing right now.”
The building’s St. Louis-made bricks may have saved the church from total destruction. Shortly after the fire was extinguished, an engineer climbed a lift and declared that the state of the masonry looks to be in decent condition. If the upcoming engineering assessment confirms that appraisal, it’s possible that the remaining structure could be rebuilt. The biggest expense would be a new roof, and Blum says they’re already looking at incentives and tax credits that could help foot part of the bill. That’s the best-case scenario.
Worst-case? Everything gets knocked down and a new skate park rises where the church once stood. Blum, who used to work under Bob Cassilly at City Museum, runs a metal fabrication company called BLA Studios. Bedwell’s company, Always Hard Concrete, helps build skate parks across the country. Together, they say, they could begin the demolition process tomorrow, if they wished.
“It’s a more expensive project than it was before, but we have a lot of options that we didn’t have before,” Blum says. “It’s just a different opportunity. If we can try to save what was the oldest neo-Gothic church west of the Mississippi River, we’re going to try. We feel like we owe it to the building to at least give it a shot.”
