ELIZABETHTOWN, Ky. — The 49.2-acre plot of ground that will become home to a new, larger St. James parish and school was dedicated May 4 by Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz.

Before a crowd of more than 300, the archbishop blessed the ground that will eventually hold a new middle school, elementary school and church.

“We take confidence that it is with the Lords’ grace that this house will be built,” the archbishop said at the blessing.

No one knows exactly when construction will begin at the new St. James location, according to Father J. Richard Sullivan, who will head the parish until next month when he becomes pastor of St. Michael Church in Jefferson County. Father Charles Walker will become pastor of St. James Church in June.

“That’s one of the reasons we thought this would be a good time for me to move,” said Father Sullivan, who has served as St. James’ pastor since 1997.

“The parish leaders need to be making those plans (about the start of construction), and I was going to be here at the most for one more year,” he explained. “It might be two or three years before there is any groundbreaking here; the decision will be what to build first.”

In addition to relocating from its land-locked campus in downtown Elizabethtown, St. James Church also has been clustered with St. Ambrose Church in Cecilia, Ky., and St. Ignatius Church in White Mills, Ky., as part of the archdiocese’s reorganization plan.

In fact, following the dedication ceremony this past Sunday, the 300 or so members of the clustered parishes held a dinner at St. Ambrose, Father Sullivan noted.

“There were about 300 people there, too,” he said. “St. Ambrose is about halfway between St. James and St. Ignatius, and so we thought we’d have the dinner there. It’s probably one of the bigger events they’ve ever hosted.”

The land blessed by Archbishop Kurtz lies on the top of a hill near the intersection of Rineyville and Ring roads. The site was purchased with the help of a $500,000 grant from the archdiocese and $600,000 of the parish’s own savings. The balance of the property’s cost — $2,258,000 — will be paid with the help of a loan from National City Bank.

St. James has been considering relocating for a while, given its lack of expansion possibilities at the current site. The parish has nearly 2,000 registered households as members, and that number is expected to grow over the next decade.

Much of that growth is likely to come as a result of a planned expansion of the garrison at nearby Ft. Knox, just north of Elizabethtown.

“With the base realignment plan at Ft. Knox, we knew the parish would need to have more space available,” Father Sullivan said.

The U.S. Army is moving its Human Resources Command and the 3rd Brigade of the First Infantry Division to Ft. Knox over the next two years, and by 2011, soldiers from the Army’s Accessions Command and Army Cadet Command also will be located on the base. Over that same time period, the Army plans to relocate the 84th Army Reserve Region Training Center to Ft. Knox, too.

The reorganization means the military facility will add about 2,500 soldiers and some 2,000 additional civilian workers over the next two to three years. And there is some talk at the Pentagon about expanding Ft. Knox even further, according to the Associated Press.

All the new base personnel will mean an increase in the number of families living in the St. James area, making the parish expansion a necessity.

“The decision for us will be what to build first,” Father Sullivan explained. “The thinking right now is that we’ll probably build a middle school and a gymnasium. That would free up two buildings on our current campus to be used by the elementary school.”

Eventually the new campus will also house the new St. James Church and the elementary school.

“But all those plans are negotiable,” Father Sullivan noted. “Things can change; Ft. Knox could expand even more, and perhaps at some point down the road there would even be a need for a Catholic high school again. That doesn’t seem quite feasible now, but things change.”