St. Demetrios rising from the ashes

Major reconstruction of Merrick’s St. Demetrios Church, which a 2013 fire nearly destroyed, began this winter. The project is no easy task, church leaders say — preparatory steps involving an insurance company, town and county agencies, architects, engineers, art and religious experts, contractors, craftsmen and repairmen took 16 months — but the goal is to remake the church better than it was.

“In many ways, the church will be a new building,” said the Rev. Nikiforos Fakinos, St. Demetrios’s priest. “From a safety, practical and cosmetic standpoint, it will be superior to what we had before, thanks to the goodness and the generosity of all our people who came together so that the church is reconstructed … the way it should be.”

Fakinos said that Allcon Contracting Corporation of College Point, Queens, started the rebuilding in mid-December. Workers erected scaffolding outside St. Demetrios, a Greek Orthodox church at 2421 Hewlett Ave., in order to make masonry, electrical and window repairs. The design plans call for safety and modern building upgrades, Fakinos said, from a fire-suppression system to energy-efficient heating/cooling systems and lighting, and an elevator.

The priest described the reconstruction’s significant scope. Built in the early 1980s, the Byzantine church — one of Merrick’s largest buildings — is shaped like a cross and topped with a giant copper dome. Fakinos said that the fire damaged or destroyed handmade religious iconography, some it more than a century old, from carved wood to silver artifacts and 56 custom stained-glass windows. It also obliterated renovations that the church had finished a month earlier, like a central air-conditioning system. Workers will now re-lay 7,000 square feet of marble floor, Fakinos said.

Peter Skenderis, president of St. Demetrios’s parish council, estimated the church’s repair costs at roughly $7 million, and said that church officials hope to reopen in June. He, too, spoke of the church’s reconstruction as a challenging task that the parish is meeting through unity and perseverance.