Growing churches and their home communities sometimes find themselves at an uncomfortable crossroads, where the demands of a burgeoning congregation conflict mightily with local land-use rules. Colorado churches, backed by a powerful federal law, have been bold in making their case for expansion, with some arguing that plans for bigger, better church campuses trump planning maps.
But when churches clash with communities over how much square footage is truly needed for worship and education, the cost can be high — personally, politically and to the government pocketbook.
Churches say they are chafing under severe land-development restrictions and the demands of their growing congregations.
Vacant land is hard to find in the Denver metro area, expensive and not easily relinquished, in terms of zoning, to churches and other tax-exempt organizations, said the Rev. Calvin Wittman of Applewood Baptist Church in Wheat Ridge.
City governments prefer tax-generating businesses to churches, which results in de facto government restraint of religious freedom, Wittman said.
Applewood Baptist wanted to build a three-story, 35,685-square-foot building for Sunday school and other youth ministries at its current location at 11200 W. 32nd Ave.
But the plan was blocked by the Wheat Ridge City Council and a group of residents who worried that the church’s new size would worsen traffic congestion and light pollution, among other things.
Applewood owns the land where it planned to build and could have gone to court to fight the city. But Wittman said litigation seemed at odds with its Christian mission.
“I didn’t think it communicated the right message,” Wittman said. “We want to be a better witness for Christ than pursuing an adversarial relationship with the community.”
Other churches have decided not to turn the other cheek and have instead waged expensive fights using the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, or RLUIPA.
The federal law, passed in 2000, has been invoked to protect religious freedom in dozens of land-use disputes.
RLUIPA prevents local governments from treating a church differently from any secular enterprise when it comes to land use and zoning decisions, said Tom Macdonald, a Denver attorney who — along with the Washington, D.C., law firm Becket Fund for Religious Liberty — represents Rocky Mountain Christian Church in Boulder County.
Rural church vs. Boulder County
The church submitted plans in 2004 to add 132,000 square feet to its 106,000-square-foot campus over a 20-year period. The plans call for a multipurpose/chapel building, a gymnasium and a gallery.
Boulder County commissioners denied the plan two years later. They said the expansion would further clog two-lane roads leading in and out of Niwot and that new buildings are incompatible with county open space that borders the property.
Mary Jolly cheered commissioners, saying recently that the church’s proposed campus would dwarf anything else in nearby Niwot, a town of 4,000.
“It would be larger than our high school and three times the size of Niwot Elementary School,” Jolly said. “That’s way over the top. Do we really need an entertainment center for Christ?”
But the church saw things differently and appealed the commissioners’ decision in court. After a two-week trial in U.S. District Court in November 2008, jurors said Boulder County had violated RLUIPA.
“We never argued we were eligible for special rights,” said the Rev. Alan Ahlgrim,Rocky Mountain’s lead pastor. “We’re arguing we should have the same rights as any property owner.”
U.S. District Judge Robert Blackburn ordered Boulder County to approve the church’s land-use application within 45 days.
But Boulder County appealed the decision, and arguments were heard March 8 in the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The case has so far cost the county and its insurer $2.4 million, $250,000 of which will come from county coffers.
Macdonald said the District Court ruling is important because it opens an avenue for other churches to fight for development rights in Boulder County.
“There is evidence that some churches just withdrew their applications because they didn’t want to be put through the county’s hoops,” Macdonald said.
New gauges for government
Boulder County Commissioner Ben Pearlman said the accusation that the county is anti-church is far off-base.
“In fact, until this application from Rocky Mountain Christian Church, every other application made by churches have been approved,” Pearlman said.
Pearlman and other officials say RLUIPA is far-reaching and yet so vague that local governments have no idea whether they can even limit the height of church steeples.
“Normally, we consider what impacts a development will have on traffic and on nearby land and development,” Pearlman said. “But when you overlay that with some sort of determination if it is a substantial burden on the practice of religion, that’s an entirely different test.”
Wittman, of Applewood Baptist Church, said that when the church proposed its expansion plans, some neighbors expressed hostility toward churches that he found disturbing.
“In the last 10 years, we’ve grown from about 300 people to about 1,000, but we can’t grow beyond that because we can’t build on our land,” Wittman said. “My mother used to say you can’t let the shoe tell the foot how big it can grow, but that’s what’s happening.”
Colorado Christian University has dropped plans for a residential campus for about 900 students because of opposition from neighbors in Highlands Ranch.
Opponents said the proposed campus, on a 100-acre parcel south of Rock Canyon High School, would increase area congestion, noise and light pollution and degrade wildlife habitat — all without generating property-tax dollars.
Although the area was zoned for an educational institution, university officials decided the project wasn’t worth the fight and are looking elsewhere.
“It was part of our Christian values that we didn’t want to start a civil war in the community by forcing the issue,” university spokesman Ron Benton said.
Benton added he thinks the neighborhood sentiment was more anti-development than anti-religious.
That also seems to be the case in Lafayette, where Flatirons Community Church is expected to move from a former ranch-supply store in the Coal Creek Shopping Center on South Boulder Road to a pair of empty big-box stores in the aging Countryside Shopping Center across the street.
Before negotiating the potential move from one shopping center to another, the church proposed to develop 24 acres in a neighborhood on the east side of Lafayette. Plans called for a 117,000-square-foot building with about 1,000 parking spaces and a 3,000-seat auditorium.
Those plans angered neighbors who said the development would overwhelm local streets.
Former City Councilman Kerry Bensman said the ire wasn’t based on faith but rather its impact on a charter school and two adjacent neighborhoods.
“Basically I thought it would be a traffic mess,” said Bensman, who voted against the church’s rezoning request.
Although the deal is not yet done, the 7,400-member church now is proposing to retrofit a long-vacant Wal-Mart and a partially occupied Albertsons with amenities similar to those proposed for the eastside project.
The traffic impacts may be less, but the city still must wrangle several variables, Bensman said.
“A significant number of parishioners will come from out of town,” he said. “Will they stay and go to a local restaurant, do some shopping, or will they worship here and just go home?
“Theoretically, you are asking the rest of the population of the city to subsidize the presence of the church. People don’t like to talk about that, but that’s what is going on.”
Election fallout from church fight
Former Longmont City Councilwoman Karen Benker said she consulted with several pastors in the community before she cast the only “no” vote against annexing property owned by LifeBridge Christian Church into the city in 2007.
LifeBridge developers hoped to turn a 340-acre parcel near Union Reservoir into a mixed-use project of 700 homes, 680,000 square feet of commercial development and 1 million square feet of religious and civic construction.
Benker questioned the impact of the development on city services, criticized the lack of detail of the proposal and said it would turn Longmont’s eastern border into a commercial sprawl.
“So many churches have a mission of helping the sick and incarcerated and, in my opinion, they shouldn’t be building strip malls,” Benker said.
The backlash was almost immediate. Bloggers attacked her as an anti-Christian zealot and accused her of wearing a “secret nightie” that said “Kill the Christians.”
Benker said those feelings played a huge role in her losing — by a wide margin — to Katie Witt in the November City Council election.
“I take my faith very seriously,” Benker said. “But I don’t regret my vote at all. This wasn’t a church issue; it wasn’t a religious issue; it was a development issue.”
Witt said LifeBridge would have been a huge asset for Longmont, bringing $1.2 million annually into the city. LifeBridge, because of resident unrest with its proposal, took its plans to Firestone, which annexed the Union parcel.
“Now we do not have access to that tax revenue,” Witt said.
LifeBridge administrator Kevin King said it was never the church’s intent to control development of the Union parcel. The church just wanted to expand its campus and sell off the rest of its land to developers. (The church recently transferred about a third of the land to the for-profit Church Development Fund Inc., which plans to sell the property.)
“We are a church, not a commercial developer,” King said.
Monte Whaley: 720-929-0907 or mwhaley@denverpost.com
