The bronze doors of Immaculate Conception Church are always open during the day, a welcoming gesture to the surrounding Melrose neighborhood in the South Bronx. Decorated with figures of the Virgin Mary, the doors are graceful — and heavy. “My main issue is trying to open them in the morning,” the Rev. Francis Skelly, the church’s pastor, said. “They keep me in shape.”  The bigger challenge is keeping them open: The parish is poor, and money for repairs and maintenance is tight. Twenty years ago, the church’s copper steeple had to be dismantled after pieces began to crash onto East 150th Street. It has yet to be restored because parish leaders have other priorities for the congregation’s 1,200 members — most of them Latinos and immigrants — who turn to it not just as a place to worship, but also for help with things such as citizenship classes and preparing tax returns.  Immaculate, as the faithful call it, has always been a church for newcomers, starting with the German immigrants who filled its pews when the current structure opened in 1888, replacing a wooden building that had stood there before. After decades of doing hard and unheralded work, the church is being recognized by New York City’s Landmarks Preservation Commission, which has proposed that the exterior be designated as a landmark.  As much as Father Skelly appreciates the nod, it is the last thing he needs: Landmark status, he said, would create financial and bureaucratic burdens if parts of the 128-year-old structure required repairs or renovation, making any alterations complicated and expensive.  “This was the worst possible news I could have heard,” he said recently, before having to dash off to deal with a flood in a church bathroom. “The landmarks commission doesn’t care about people, they care about buildings. We are an immigrant parish. Financially, we break even. But we’re always a boiler explosion away from being in financial trouble.”  The designation — on which the commission is scheduled to vote this month — is itself steeped in history, since it was originally proposed in 1980 before being set aside amid local opposition. It languished for decades, until the commission decided last year to start eliminating its lengthy backlog. Thirty properties, including Immaculate, are under consideration, said Damaris Olivo, a spokeswoman for the commission.  Designating the church as a landmark, Ms. Olivo said, is part of an effort to ensure that areas of the city outside Manhattan are recognized for noteworthy structures. She added that while landmark status would require the approval of repairs and renovations to safeguard the building’s integrity, the commission had staff members who could expedite requests, and that some state funds and private grants were available to help defray costs.  “The commission is aware that the changing nature of the city’s neighborhoods has had an impact on religious institutions,” Ms. Olivo said. “This is a national phenomenon in cities across the country grappling with these same challenges. Our approach to saving these buildings is to collaborate with religious organizations to find solutions that benefit them and the public interest.”  Nevertheless, the Archdiocese of New York, which includes the Bronx, and the Diocese of Brooklyn oppose the designation of Immaculate and three other Roman Catholic Church properties as landmarks, saying the classification would strain limited resources that could be better used to help the needy.  When Father Skelly learned of the proposal, he recalled the experience of St. Cecilia’s Church in East Harlem, where he was assigned in 1976, when it was designated a landmark. The Rev. Peter Mushi, who is now the chuch’s pastor, has mixed feelings about the designation.  Three years ago, Father Mushi embarked on a project to fix the church’s roof and masonry. The original budget for the work was $1.2 million; the cost of using the appropriate material and specialized contractors, he said, pushed it to $3.3 million. Father Mushi said he was forced to borrow $2 million from the Archdiocese of New York when a preservation grant from the state provided only $200,000. He was irked that the church still had not been able to install a handicap-accessible ramp that would satisfy landmark requirements.  “This parish is 60 percent senior citizens,” Father Mushi said. “We have a lot of senior citizens who cannot climb the stairs. We’re still looking for the money to put a ramp in.”  Father Skelly knew all about that struggle: After serving at other parishes, he returned to St. Cecilia’s as pastor from 1999 to 2005, and he had tried, without success, to install an acceptable ramp.  “They made it so restrictive in that they wanted it not to be seen by the public and take away from the original design,” Father Skelly recalled. “What I said was the church was for the people, it was not a museum. We’re trying to get people into it.”  With an April 12 vote on the landmark designation for Immaculate approaching, Father Skelly and parish leaders plan to give a commission representative a tour of the church this week and to express their concerns. They worry that it may be for naught since the designation has the support of several preservationists and historians.  Maria Caban, a lay leader, understands that landmark status would help preserve local history and culture. But she fears it might serve as another step toward gentrification if developers used it as a selling point.  “Immaculate is a church of the people and for the people,” she said. “It really is the one institution that unifies all the different ethnic groups in the community. I don’t want to see that go away. If anything, that is what needs to be preserved.”  A version of this article appears in print on April 4, 2016, on page A17 of the New York edition with the headline: A Church Where Landmark Status Would Be More Burden Than Honor. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
The Immaculate Conception Church could soon be given official landmark status, which church leaders say would create an extra hardship for a poor parish that already struggles to pay for repairs.