2024 Fall Issue of Urban Land - 104

can help a struggling faith-centered
structure become a prosperous, mixeduse
hub benefitting the entire community.
1. Sell and reimagine. A declining First
Church Miami UMC, faced with a dwindling
congregation and increasing bills,
sold its prime location in downtown Miami
to developer Property Markets Group
for $55 million. Using part of the proceeds,
the church bought back 25,000
square feet (2,323 sq m) in the development
for the church's coffee shop-open
to everyone-a gym, yoga room, and
worship center. " The church wanted to
proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ in
downtown Miami in the future, and to do
so for longer than the next few years, it
would need to change, " said the church's
pastor, Rev. Dr. Audrey Warren. " We were
at a point where we had to leverage our
property. "
2. Close and donate. A 50-member
congregation, Twinbrook Baptist Church
in Rockville, Maryland, sold its building
well below market to a healthy Hispanic
congregation already meeting there, then
used its $1 million in proceeds to fund
area charities, helping 35 religious groups
and other nonprofits meet local needs.
3. Partner with a developer. Sharon
United Methodist Church, the owner of
significant land in a fast-growing part of
Charlotte, North Carolina, elected to go
big. The church partnered with developer
Childress Klein to build the SouthPark
Apex development, which includes 345
luxury apartments and a 175-room Hyatt
Centric hotel with a rooftop bar and restaurant,
as well as a 35,000-square-foot
(3,252 sq m) worship center for SouthPark
Church-a state-of-the-art facility
with indoor and outdoor space that can
host up to 300 guests and serve as a premier
Charlotte event venue.
4. Collaborate with other faith communities.
St. John's Episcopal Cathedral, in
a neighborhood adjacent to downtown
Jacksonville, Florida, realized that its
future depended in no small part on the
health of the surrounding neighborhood.
A technical assistance panel of the Urban
Land Institute's North Florida District led
to forming a cathedral district with five
churches, other property owners, and
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FALL 202 4
the city on the board. The district works
on making the entire area, not only the
churches, a diverse, full-service
neighborhood.
5. Build on surplus land. St. Peter's
United Church of Christ was a declining
church in a challenged neighborhood of
downtown Louisville, Kentucky, when it
decided to invest in the underused property
adjacent to it. Today, the Village @
West Jefferson, also known as MOLO Village,
is a 30,000-square-foot (2,787 sq
m), mixed-use development that serves as
a neighborhood gathering place.
6. Focus on recreation. The Church of
St. Benedict in Manchester, England,
was transformed into Parthian Climbing
Centre, replete with state-of-the-art climbing
walls, a café, and a retail operation.
The size and shape of church sanctuaries
from the 19th and early 20th centuries
lend themselves to the sorts of gym
operations at this facility and others, such
as Newcastle Climbing Centre in England,
Hoosier Heights in Bloomington, Indiana,
and City Athletics in Philadelphia.
7. Increase offerings without redevelopment.
New websites such as Venuely, out
of New York; ChurchSpace, out of Austin;
and thisspace, out of San Francisco make
it simple for a house of worship to rent its
underused properties to the local community-a
sort of Airbnb for faith properties.
A new community-governance
model
Rev. Graham Singh, founder and CEO of
Relèven, a Montreal-based, not-for-profit
corporation that assists houses of worship
throughout North America, notes
that revitalization of a faith property may
require more than bricks and mortar.
" Many current church properties, instead
of undergoing redevelopment, are better
suited to renovation [and] reuse, and
often require a new communitygovernance
model. "
Although good examples of reuse and
redevelopment exist for declining places
of worship, the scale and wide distribution
of these struggling buildings is daunting.
A National Council of Churches official
estimates that 100,000 churches may be
forced to close over the next several years
in the U.S. alone.
" Any serious endeavor to reuse or
redevelop a house of worship requires a
strong will, infinite patience, and an infusion
of property development expertise, "
says Chris Elisara, vice president for civic
partnerships of the Thriving Cities Group.
" There are inherent challenges [that] congregations
have developing their property,
especially when they overlook practical
realities with impractical passions.
Decision-making can be confusing and
diffuse: e.g., the Roman Catholic Church
makes decisions top-down; Southern Baptist
churches, bottom-up; most mainline
Protestant denominations are a
combination. "
At the municipal level, zoning regulations,
building codes, and historic preservation
ordinances weren't drafted with
church reuse and redevelopment in mind.
Although federal, state, and local governments
have programs to make some
funds available for affordable housing,
money to change distressed faith centers
into community hubs is less predictable.
In communities with hot real estate
markets, the major hurdle may be how to
convince developers to devote space in
a gold-star development for community
use. For ones in cold real estate markets,
the major challenge may be how to rally
players and raise money around a project
that may look like a lost cause.
Efforts to transform underused faith
properties into community hubs takes a
village: municipalities, developers, design
professionals, financiers, local citizens, and
especially church members. It takes analysis
of many factors: the property and real
estate market, the congregation and judicatory
(parent organization of the faith),
the neighborhood and municipality, and
both the financial and human resources.
With a bit of faith, due diligence, and
imagination, even a declining congregation
can find a way to keep the spirit of
their faith alive-even as the building itself
shifts from its single-purpose origin to one
serving the larger community in a variety
of new ways. UL
RICK REINHARD is principal of Niagara Consulting
Group and an associate at the Lakelands Institute.
2024 Fall Issue of Urban Land

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