Here’s an upbeat, dog-bites-man story concerning the neighboring town of Lafayette, Colorado, where a major piece of the retail economy has been on the skids for years. Wal-Mart and Albertson’s long ago vacated the city’s biggest mall, hollowing out two cavernous buildings and all but snuffing what little business had remained for the small shops and restaurants that once lined the plaza. Although the city was hoping to redevelop the site with a mix of offices, residential and retail, when recession hit full-bore a couple of years ago commercial interest dried up. Let’s skip ahead to the present: The site has just received a $22 million refurbishment; its huge, weed-sprouted parking lot has been repaved and a new, 4-acre lot added; the big-box stores have been joined under one roof, creating a 130,000-square-foot room; and, the facility has been drawing 10,000 visitors a week, many of whom are spending money at neighborhood restaurants and stores, although not at the “main attraction” itself.
Can you guess what “business” this new operator is in? Here’s another hint: millions of dollars went into the installation of stadium-sized video monitors, state-of-the-art sound and light equipment, and seating for 4,000. If you guessed “concert hall,” you’re close, since the place really rocks on weekends. But this operator is in the business, not of rock concerts, but of redemption, since it’s a house of prayer — Flatiron Community Church (FCC), it’s called, with a congregation of 10,000 that is the second biggest in Colorado. And it is succeeding in such a big way that it has begun to revitalize a section of town that was commercially dead a year ago. “Ten-thousand people have to buy gas, groceries and hamburgers somewhere,” says Jim Burgen, the tattooed and energetic lead pastor of the non-denominational Christian church.
Reluctant to Rezone
The move to the new building almost didn’t happen, since Lafayette was reluctant to rezone the area to allow a church that would generate no sales-tax revenues. Fortunately, the city finally relented after years of discussions. “We looked at the plan and we looked at the economy,” said Lafayette’s planning director, Phillip Patterson, “and while we thought a residential/retail project would be the best and highest use, we had to ask ourselves if we were going to sit here five, 10 years from now and hold out for that.” With the zoning issue out of the way, FCC bought Wal-Mart’s 108,000-square-foot building for $2.9 million and acquired Albertson’s old shell from the city for $1.4 million. FCC couldn’t have been more pleased, since it solved a seating shortage that necessitated holding six services each weekend. Moreover, they were never keen on building a shiny new church. “This is a recycled building, and we’re kind of recycled people,” the 49-year-old Burgen told a reporter for the Boulder Camera. The “recycling” would appear to be spreading, since the Wanetka Marketplace just west of Flatirons has found two new tenants for buildings that had sat unoccupied: Sunflower Marketplace (Whole Foods on-the-cheap, sort of), and Jax Merchandise.
Who’d have imagined in this day and age that a church would be the anchor tenant of an urban renewal project?
(If you’d like to have Rick’s Picks commentary delivered free each day to your e-mail box, click here.)
@Martin, Benjamin, and Steve…
You guys are all awesome. I appreciate your independence of thought, and your respect for the value of debate.
My last contribution regarding the whole “God vs. no-God” discussion is simply that evil can not exist without good, and that goodness is not commonly considered the corruption of evil, while the inverse definitely is a commonly held viewpoint; and yet one can not decry natural selection as evil lest they choose never to eat again, for every calorie required to sustain our biological selves comes from a formerly living organism of some sort. We must kill to survive.
Enlightenment seems to be most corrupted when the labels begin to be applied. Suffice it to say I like the way you all think, and I’ve appreciated this discussion.