Changing times a signal to close Cenacle Retreat House

Running the Warrenville Cenacle Retreat House has been an exercise in survival for 15 years.

Vanishing guests, fewer nuns and changing times are all telling Sister Mary Guido that it's time to adjust the way the sisters minister.

The sisters announced the closure of the retreat center Friday, starting a countdown to the loss of a Warrenville landmark for the past 70 years.

Sister Guido, who has helped oversee operations at the retreat house in recent years, is the local leader of the cenacle.

She says it was about 15 years ago that the retreat house first noted a steady and dramatic decline in visitors.

The house can accommodate about 75 overnight retreat guests and has meeting space for daily gatherings and 12-step meetings. The average annual occupancy rate for overnight beds is only about 30 percent now. Meeting space tops out at a 45 percent occupancy rate.

In other words, there's a lot of unused space at the 42-acre campus.

"You can't exactly run a building like that," Sister Guido said in an interview Monday. "Our question has been, 'Do we need a 75-bed facility as we did when we opened?'"

A busier world with less time for weekend retreats means the answer is no. There are also many more spiritual outlets in the area. That's good for humanity, but not so good for business.

"People had different habits and spiritual ways of getting fed before," Sister Guido said. "These facilities have served the people very well, but perhaps it might be time to let this go and minister more effectively in other ways."

There also are fewer nuns at the retreat house. Back in the early 1960s, the sisters built an addition to the house with 55 bedrooms to accommodate the influx of new sisters needing training and living space. Now there are only six full-time nuns at the retreat.

That means less free labor to handle the upkeep, cooking and office work. Paid staff was hired in the early 1980s.

To offset the additional costs and profit losses, program fees have increased every few years. But the charitable nature of Cenacle prevented fees from escalating too much. As a result, it's common for the sisters to lose money on programs.

There's no rush or immediate fear of destitution for the sisters. In fact, they don't even have an asking price for the property. Yet, when the retreat closes, it'll mark the loss of the third-oldest house run by the Cenacle Sisters.

"We're not leaving nothing behind," Sister Guido said. "One of the legacies that we know we will have is how we've tried to be with the local people in ministry. It's alive in the people who've been with us. That's what's important."

The sisters' legacy should live on in the preservation of the land they cared for, Mayor David Brummel said Monday after an afternoon meeting with officials from the Warrenville Park District, the Forest Preserve District of DuPage County and The Conservation Foundation, a Naperville-based nonprofit.

The forest preserve district is "keenly interested" in buying the property in cooperation with the city and park district so that it can be kept as open space for the public, Brummel said.

"It's a very important amenity for the community," he said.

Brummel said he hoped the project could be financed through outside grants; The Conservation Foundation recently provided such funding to the Warrenville Park District.

"At this point, we're all very interested in coming up with a plan to preserve the land," said park district Executive Director Diane Dillow.

Devoting the land to the public makes more sense than handing it to a developer, who would face "significant obstacles" in readying the site for the construction of homes, Brummel said. The property is spotted with flood plains; bridges and other infrastructure aren't up to many modern standards, he said.