Fifty people — many of them clad in red, the color that has become the symbol of the movement to save the Providence Heights campus — crammed into the Issaquah City Council Chambers Wednesday morning to hear the verdict on whether or not the campus would face the wrecking ball.

However, they will have to wait approximately six more weeks for an answer on the fate of Providence Heights — the hearing was postponed to 10 a.m. on Tuesday, July 11.

Wednesday’s meeting was scheduled as a hearing for the appeal submitted by the Sammamish Heritage Society, which challenged the Mitigated Determination of Non-Significance the city of Issaquah issued to campus owner Plateau Campus, LLC in mid-April.

However, Hearing Examiner Ted Hunter stated that the gathering could only be named a pre-hearing conference, and that the actual hearing could not commence that day because no demolition permit had been issued.

“An appeal hearing of an MDNS alone … cannot go forward,” Hunter said, explaining that it is the demolition permit that must be appealed, and that this cannot happen if the permit has not been issued.

Keith Niven, director of economic development and development services for the city of Issaquah, said that the city had withheld the permit to prevent demolition of the property before the appeal process had been concluded.

The decision reached Wednesday will see a demolition permit granted to Plateau Campus, LLC, but the demolition permit will include the conditions that no demolition can commence until the appeal is resolved, and that the campus chapel’s 14 one-of-a-kind stained glass windows must be safely removed, catalogued and preserved before any demolition occurs. This latter condition had previously been a condition of the MDNS.

Hundreds of history buffs from Issaquah, Sammamish, Renton, Kirkland and Redmond have been pooling their time, effort and resources to save the former nuns’ college from demolition in what turned into a contentious and highly emotional debate between community members and the city of Issaquah.

The campus was built for the Sisters of Providence in the 1960s and sold to the Lutheran Bible Institute in the late 1970s. In 2008, the City Church of Kirkland bought the property. Now the City Church wishes to demolish the campus in order to resell the property.

In July 2016, the Issaquah School Board voted to move forward in condemning the Providence Heights property so that a future high school could be built there for the rapidly-growing School District. School District representatives have expressed doubt that the buildings could be reused, noting that having a public school campus with religious images would violate separation of church and state.

At the end of March of this year, the city of Issaquah issued Plateau Campus, LLC — an arm of the City Church — with a Determination of Non-Significance, stating that demolishing the campus would not greatly damage the environment — including the history and culture — of the area.

This decision provoked a wave of outrage among residents; in a two-week public comment period, the city received over 100 letters and 300 signatures on a petition asking the city to reconsider and stating that the Providence Heights property is too historically valuable to the community to tear down.

In response, the city changed the DNS to an MDNS, adding the condition that before demolition, the 30-foot-tall stained glass windows must be safely preserved.

The windows were designed especially for the Sisters of Providence by the late, world-renowned French artist Gabriel Loire. Hailing from Chartres — a French city famous for its stained glass-filled cathedral — Loire designed stained glass windows for places of worship on every inhabited continent, including the Salisbury Cathedral in Salisbury, England, the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in Berlin, Germany and St. George’s Cathedral in Cape Town, South Africa.

For this reason, many of the advocates for saving Providence Heights said that it was an honor for Issaquah — which had been a small town at the time Loire created the windows — to be selected for a Loire piece alongside these world-class cities.

While the Providence Heights advocates were grateful that the city had added the stipulation saving the windows, they maintained that the entire campus — not just the windows — has historical significance. In a time when women were expected to be housewives and were given fewer opportunities for higher education, the Providence Heights College gave religious sisters a chance to have an equal education to that of men, with classics in traditionally male subjects such as chemistry and physics.

“The campus’ significance is derived from its historical association with profound changes in the Catholic Church … with women starting to get more equity,” said Julie Koler, a preservation consultant working closely with the Sammamish Heritage Society on the appeal. “This campus is the physical manifestation of that change. To just focus on the windows is to miss the main point.”

In addition, art history experts questioned whether it would even be possible to remove the windows without ruining them. Loire created the windows in his signature dalle de verre style, meaning that the chunks of glass are set in concrete rather than lead. This would make removal extremely difficult, said Chris Moore, director of the Washington Trust for Historic Preservation.

“The MDNS doesn’t make any discussion of what happens if the windows can’t be salvaged,” Moore noted.

Still, the general feeling among the advocates of saving Providence Heights after being given six more weeks to work on an appeal was one of joy, relief and gratefulness.

“I’m absolutely happy we have more time to have thoughtful consideration,” Koler said. “This clarification of process is important and hasn’t been clear before now.”

“The longer we have to educate people about the art, the history, the more hope I have,” Paula Harper-Christiansen said.

The attorneys for the City Church/Plateau Campus were not as pleased, however. Attorney Charles Maduell of the Seattle branch of Davis Wright Tremaine LLP disputed the new hearing date and asked for an earlier date due to the construction schedule and to a witness who will have to travel from the East Coast to be present.

“I don’t think that’s sufficient cause to look for another hearing date,” Hunter told him.

When Hunter asked if delaying the hearing until July would inhibit the City Church’s “ability to practice religion,” Maduell said that it would. Maduell declined to give any comments to the Reporter, including a description of what kind of religious practices would be affected and how.

It appears, however, that the campus may not currently be in use for religious purposes. Last year, the Washington State Department of Revenue determined after a lengthy examination that the Providence Heights buildings had not been used for quite a while.

Auditor Ras Roberts observed in documents obtained from the Department of Revenue that “most of the property had been vacant for some time … all of the rooms visible from the outside contained items strewn about the floor or in boxes” and noted that the “unkempt” parking areas “showed no signs of recent use.”

Sammamish Heritage Society members have stated that if Plateau Campus is not exempt from taxation as a religious organization, then it should not be able to claim exemption from historic landmark status on the grounds of being a church. According to state law, religious organizations are exempt from landmark designation.

After previously having withdrawn a landmark application earlier this year due to threats of litigation from the City Church, the Heritage Society has re-submitted an application for Providence Heights to be named a city of Issaquah historic landmark.

When Hunter questioned whether the appeal hearing should wait for a decision on the landmark status, Maduell told him there was “no cause to do that,” and stated that a landmark designation would “affect the fair market value” of the Providence Heights property.

The Heritage Society is relying entirely on local volunteers and on donations to cover its legal costs. To get involved in the effort, write to sammamish.heritage@hotmail.com. To donate funds, visit www.gofundme.com/hcs8h-save-providence-heights-campus.

The hundreds of advocates for saving Providence Heights want to see the entire historic campus maintained. They state that it is important in the history of women’s education. Nicole Jennings/staff photo

One of the conditions of the demolition permit is that no demolition can occur until the world-famous stained glass windows of the Providence Heights chapel, which were designed by renowned French artist Gabriel Loire, have been safely removed and preserved. Photo courtesy of Michael Sladek

However, art history experts believe it may be impossible to remove the windows — which contain pieces of glass set in chunks of concrete — without destroying them entirely. Photo courtesy of Michael Sladek

With 200 dorm rooms on the campus, community members have suggested that Providence Heights could be used as a shelter for the homeless. Nicole Jennings/staff photo