The Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania plans to convert 26 underutilized properties across greater Philadelphia into apartments.

Its leadership tapped The Michaels Organization to turn the properties into more than 1,000 apartments, the Philadelphia Business Journal reported. The diocese declined to identify specific sites, but several of them are in Center City.

"These are locations where people want to live, people want to go party, people want to go drink, people want to do a lot of things, but they don't want to worship," Ballard Spahr attorney Albert Dandridge, who is leading the effort, told PBJ.

"A lot of these congregations have moved away from these properties. So why can't we try to utilize them to their highest and best use?"

Work on some sites could start later this year or in 2027. The diocese will retain ownership of the land in most cases, and Michaels will work as a fee developer.

Once the projects are complete, Michaels will manage them and pay a fee to the diocese. The new units will be a mix of market rate and affordable.

The diocese has 136 congregations across Philly and its Pennsylvania suburbs, but some are underutilized or no longer host regular operations. The conversions are part of an effort to consolidate churches with smaller populations.

With regular religious participation dropping among younger Americans, churches are looking to offload underutilized space nationwide.

Last month, Crescent Communities announced plans to build a 21-story office building on a site held by the Church at Wieuca in the Buckhead section of Atlanta.

Similar efforts are underway in Boston, where Pennrose and the Hyde Square Task Force are converting Blessed Sacrament Church in Jamaica Plain into 55 units of affordable housing with 63K SF of multipurpose performance space.

Converting historic buildings into apartments is often a tough process, but that is particularly true with former churches, which often have irregular floor plates and historic protections that need to be taken into account.

"With office or school conversions, you're trying to reuse the fabric that's there, like a classroom becomes a unit. Even if you might kind of get rid of some of the walls, you are generally following that kind of footprint," Pennrose Regional Vice President Karmen Cheung told Bisnow earlier this year. "But a church brings that to another level."