Cathedral construction projects wrapping up

IC photo/ Linda Petersen

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The steps leading up to the Cathedral of the Madeleine on the west side of the front entrance are roped off during construction. The steps on the east side remain open.

SALT LAKE CITY — Two construction projects have been going on at the Cathedral of the Madeleine over the last few months. The first was recently completed; the second is expected to be finished by Christmas.

The 50 bollards installed on the west side of the cathedral are a security measure intended to protect the building from being hit; most of the funds came from a $100,000 FEMA grant, said the cathedral’s rector, Father Martin Diaz.

“In the last 10 years, there’s been a heightened awareness of safety issues that could impact houses of worship,” he said. “So, the U.S. attorney, and then the state government, has been working real hard with houses of worship to strengthen and evaluate security issues. FEMA offered a grant, and we took up that grant and that’s how we got the bollards.”

The bollards, which stand 3 feet tall, are a deterrent by themselves, but what is visible above ground is only a small part of the protective structure, Fr. Diaz said.

“What you’re looking at is a decorative cone,” he said. “So there’s a steel pipe that is embedded in six feet of concrete which runs the entire length of the bollards, and then the decorative top is put on top and a little chain. What you see is the surface, but it’s all the underside that you don’t see [that is] the protection.”

The project, which took three months to complete, was years in the making. The cathedral’s director of development, Patricia Wesson, applied for the FEMA grant in 2020, but the project was postponed first because of the pandemic, then by a labor shortage in the construction industry and then again by a concrete shortage, Wesson said.

The second project, which is ongoing, is the replacement of some of the cathedral’s drainage pipes; the system also will be connected to the street drains on B Street. This project came about because last year the parish council was considering installing a prolife memorial on B Street, but in evaluating a location Fr. Diaz and longtime parishioner Peter Leary noticed something strange about the wall on the west side of the cathedral’s main steps.

“As we were looking at that area, we said ‘Look at how the stone is discolored. Does it look like it’s bulging out?’” Fr. Diaz said.

An engineer examined the area and determined that, although it was structurally sound, the drainage needed to be redone.

“What we figured out was the drain pipes in the steps were not doing the proper job,” Fr. Diaz said. “And so we investigated that with the cameras first and said, ‘Yes, they’re blocked. So the water is not draining to an outside drain.’ So that’s why the water is kind of in the stone and leaving the chemicals behind.”

This project will remove any crushed drains and open up blocked drains using a plastic sleeve, then connect those drains to the street system.

“We think some of the drains probably went in when they redid the steps in the 1930s, and they were not connected to the street drain,” Fr. Diaz said. “But it looks like we’re pretty close now to fixing it.”

Currently the steps on the west side of the cathedral’s main entrance are roped off as the work proceeds, but Fr. Diaz is hopeful it will be completed in time for Christmas Eve services.