Scorched Trinity church receives $17M for renovations

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Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church has received about $17 million from insurance companies in the wake of a fire last year that destroyed much of its historic church in downtown Milwaukee.

But Trinity still needs another $5 million to cover the costs of restoring the church to its former condition.

Ron Harmeyer, an attorney for Trinity said Thursday that the church got $6.2 million from its property insurer and another $11 million from the insurance company of a roofing firm that caused the blaze in July 2018. This fall, the church sued Langer Roofing & Sheet Metal, the contractor that was working on the church’s roof when the fire started, to recover $10 million from the contractor’s insurer, Federal Insurance, which initially refused to pay for the damage.

But Trinity dropped the lawsuit in November after it received a payment for the damage. So far, the congregation has spent about $3.2 million on repairs, Harmeyer said, but estimates that $19 million in construction costs remain. That means the church will have to find a way to make up for a $5 million difference.

“Trinity is actively evaluating how it can reduce or eliminate that shortfall so that the church building can be fully restored to its pre-fire location,” Harmeyer said. “Its goal continues to be full restoration consistent with the historical significance of the structure.”

Trinity had long been recognized as a carefully preserved historic building before the fire. The church underwent only one major alteration in its more than 100-year-old history: a reconstruction of its basement in the ’60s. In 1979, the Wisconsin Historical Society noted that it was remarkable that such an old church had avoided fire damage for so long, according to the church’s lawsuit against Langer and Federal Insurance.

But in May 2018, a fire broke out on the roof of the church. Investigators later found that an employee of Langer — which had been hired to perform a roof restoration — had been using a grinder to remove a metal gutter on the church’s roof, when sparks ignited a tarp that had been placed on scaffolding below to catch debris. A company project manager later told investigators that he hadn’t arranged to have a spotter in place looking for fires because the worker in question was using a grinder rather than something with an open flame

The fire spread to the roof and eventually caused extensive damage to the church. Work is continuing to rebuild the church, and Trinity hopes to complete the project in 2022. Follow @natebeck9