Monday, August 28, 2006

Does anyone else think this is just plain wrong?



Christy over in Chapel Hill, NC makes mention of newhope church, where I attended during my commute between Raleigh and Nashville:

She writes:

On August 1st, demolition will begin on our church building. While it doesn't actually belong to us, we've been using it for 2 1/2 years now. Our church [newhope church] has grown by leaps and bounds since we moved there. And some of my friends have been married there.

But now it's been bought by a man living in the Gimghoul neighborhood and he's decided to demolish the church and use the land to build his retirement home.

Does anyone else think this is just plain wrong? Can you seriously tear down an active church to build a retirement home? I know that the church is not a building, it's the people. And we, the people, will move this week to our new home in Durham as we build our first building. But it just seems wrong.



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Does it seem wrong to you? The building was owned by the Catholic Diocese and was offered to newhope for purchase. However the Gimghoul historic neighborhood went to the planning commission and opposed the sale, citing use of a portion of the property used for student parking as inappropriate. The church property is next door to the University of North Carolina (UNC TarHeels) Chapel Hill. By disallowing the use of the land for student parking, the lack of revenue stream for the growing congregation would put a damper on ongoing finances, thus discouraging the potential sale for any church to assume the property. (Love thy neighbor anyway...)

However, long story short - the church has been gifted with a great piece of property to build on for the future called Legacy of Hope.

Couldn''t happen to a greater bunch of folks.

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Other links regarding:
renovated churches
Denver church condo
Churches for sale

1 comment:

Sharon Collie said...

Ugh. I love old churches. Something very wrong about that.