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Holy war
Houses of worship are facing stiff resistance from residents and government officials who are seeking to restrict their tax-free developments
By Terry Sheridan
April 14, 2003
New Life Lutheran Church has rented space for several years in western Broward County public schools and movie theaters. But when rents climbed from $250 an hour to as much as $700, the church decided to search for a permanent home.
Along Miramar’s bustling Interstate 75 corridor, land was almost $1 million per acre.
Less expensive property could be had along U.S. 27. But would the congregation travel there?
Commercial brokerage Trammell Crow helped New Life in its search for a piece of property where it could build a church sanctuary, day-care facility and elementary school. In 2001, New Life paid $1.4 million for almost six acres of vacant commercial land in Miramar.
Two years later, the site plan for the new church is pending review by city officials. If it is approved this year, the day-care facility — the first phase — won’t open until late 2004. What made New Life’s mission especially tough was the competition with developers for land, congregation president Howard Walters said.
Religious organizations are increasingly looking to build not just a place of worship, but also sprawling facilities to provide their congregations with a host of services. This trend has religious leaders dealing with many of the same problems that residential and commercial developers face: High land costs, property taxes, zoning and land-use limits, and neighborhood opposition.
But commercial developers have the benefit of local government officials who are seeking to build their tax base and boost municipal revenues. Municipalities aren’t courting houses of worship, because they take up developable property without boosting the local government’s finances.
As one Broward city official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, put it: “I’d hate to be in their shoes. A lot of towns don’t want them.”
Cities are wooing residential and commercial developments that promote smart growth — pedestrian friendly, mixed-used projects that concentrate populations in a vital core area. Those projects help boost tax revenues that pay for services that keep voters happy.
Houses of worship, too, are seeking smart growth. But how, or if, they fit into the mix is the question.
While small community churches and synagogues haven’t disappeared, they are giving way to their own type of mixed-use project that often includes schools and day-care facilities. Even larger campuses, called mega-churches, offer sports facilities, auditoriums and lavishly landscaped grounds for prayer trails and other activities.
These large developments mean tens of thousands of square feet of buildings on acres of land that can’t be taxed. Religious organizations are exempt from taxation according to federal statute and because of the constitutional separation of church and state.
In the tricounty South Florida region, houses of worship own about 5,000 tax-exempt parcels valued at almost $2.7 billion. In the 2002 tax year, Miami-Dade County counted 2,273 parcels valued at $1.3 billion; in Broward, 1,328 parcels were valued at $733 million; and in Palm Beach, 1,342 parcels were valued at $654 million.
Some local governments have decided to fight the tax exemptions, particularly where large developments are involved.
In February, Palm Beach Community Church lost its battle for a 2000 tax exemption on 47 acres of vacant land it owns in Palm Beach Gardens.
The church plans a mixed-use project of more than 500,000 square feet that it would only partially own. The church’s portion is to be called the Borland Center for Community Enrichment.
Ram Development would own and develop the commercial and residential portions of the project, which could total more than 300,000 square feet. Another nonprofit group will own the common areas.
The church applied for an exemption to the 2000 tax bill for the site, some $80,000.
State tax law ties exemptions to the predominant use of the property, said Jay Jacknin, an attorney with Christiansen & Jacknin in West Palm Beach, who represents Palm Beach County Property Appraiser Gary Nikolits.
“We look at this on a case-by-case basis and, if there is even a gray area, the churches have gotten their exemptions,” he said.
Although Palm Beach Community Church said that its members prayed on the church’s land, much of that property was under contract for commercial and residential uses.
“We just didn’t think it was fair to the other taxpayers, who are paying taxes on property, to give them [the church] a blanket exemption on the entire parcel,” Jacknin said.
Boxed in
Palm Beach Community Church challenged the decision in Palm Beach Circuit Court and lost there and on appeal in the 4th District Court of Appeal. The church’s lawsuits against the property appraiser for the 2001 and 2002 tax bills are pending. For the 2003 tax assessment, the church has agreed to pay half of the property taxes.
“The problem is that there is no precedent for our situation,” said Hank Gonzalez, the church’s project manager. “We are in intense dialogue with the county over what is appropriate to be exempt while we are going through planning and zoning.”
Zoning, in fact, is how most local governments box in houses of worship, said Matt Messier, vice president of Trammell Crow’s newly expanded Orlando-based church brokerage division, who works with religious organizations throughout the state, including New Life.
Municipalities limit how far one house of worship must be from another. There are also strict limits on building size and on which roads the facilities are located.
“In older days, churches could go into any zoning [district],” Messier said.
But as unincorporated county lands increasingly have been annexed into municipalities, zoning rules have tightened in commercial areas. Increasingly, religious organizations are allowed only in a “community facility” district and must get a special exception permit to operate in other commercial districts.
In North Lauderdale, city officials are trying to deal with an overabundance of houses of worship in its commercial district. City Commissioner Gary Frankel blames the problem on a lack of adequate planning and zoning regulations for the city’s State Road 7 corridor.
Describing the highway as a “hodgepodge of stupidity and arrogance,” Frankel said the city is losing its “commercial corridor to churches and other nonprofit groups.”
The city has launched a review of how many nonprofit groups are in its zoning districts, and at what cost to the city. Next week, North Lauderdale will hold its first public hearing on a proposed moratorium on nonprofit-use permits until the study is completed.
Frankel said that the abundance of churches is driving the push for stricter zoning policies. “Churches are big business,” he said.
And the houses of worship keep coming.
Late last year, Calvary Chapel of Fort Lauderdale Inc. bought the former Palm Pontiac property in North Lauderdale and two adjacent vacant parcels totaling almost 15 acres at 827 S. State Road 7.
The church, whose sanctuary will remain on Cypress Creek Road in Fort Lauderdale, received a special zoning exception permit to convert the former dealership building to a 20,000-square-foot thrift store.
Because of that special exception, the city’s proposed moratorium on nonprofit permits would not affect Calvary’s thrift store, said City Attorney Sam Goren. But it could affect plans the church may have for its 8.5 acres of vacant land, which is not included in the special exception.
Calvary Chapel attorney Paul Alfieri in Fort Lauderdale said those plans have not been determined. The church’s application for tax exemption on its property is pending before the Broward County property appraiser.
‘Encroachment’
Across Broward in Southwest Ranches, town leaders are taking a similar attitude toward religious organizations but for a completely different reason.
“We aren’t interested in a commercial base. Our problem is different,” said Town Attorney Gary Poliakoff of Becker & Poliakoff in Hollywood, who has lived in Southwest Ranches for 22 years.
It was at least partly because of what Poliakoff described as the “encroachment of houses of worship” on the community’s rural lifestyle that Southwest Ranches incorporated in 2000.
The town of 7,200 residents has 22 houses of worship.
The town approved new, more restrictive zoning regulations in 2002. The new rules limit religious organizations’ facilities to five acres or less. They must also be at least 1,000 feet away from another house of worship and only on certain main roadways.
Even after meeting those requirements, the River of Grass Unitarian Universalist Congregation faced a struggle for acceptance.
The church has a contract to buy a 4.67-acre nursery at 5200 SW 160th Ave., where it plans to build a sanctuary and meditative gardens. The property is surrounded by homes, whose owners have made their opposition to River of Grass as clear as a church bell.
To appease neighbors, church leaders made several concessions. They agreed to build a sanctuary of less than half the 45,000-square-foot space that zoning regulations allow; to restrict access to a nearby roadway; and to avoid asphalt parking lots. The church also agreed to dedicate a watering hole for horses on its property, which is located in the town’s equestrian corridor.
River of Grass also agreed to pay the town $3,000 a year in lieu of taxes to cover the cost of municipal services. The nursery now operating on the property pays $1,800 in taxes. The difference, said church attorney Bonnie Miskel of Ruden McClosky Smith Schuster & Russell in Fort Lauderdale, allows for property appreciation.
Last week, the town approved the church’s zoning — making River of Grass the first church to be approved under Southwest Ranches’ new requirements.
Still, some residents continue to believe that River of Grass “has been shoved down their throats,” said Town Councilman Don Maines, who voted against the church’s zoning.
Thirty miles away, the same sentiment is echoed by residents in an unincorporated neighborhood in southwestern Miami-Dade County. They have been embroiled in a six-year battle against University Baptist Church, which wants to build a 20-acre mega-church.
In a neighborhood of one-acre homes along Sunset Drive east of the Palmetto Expressway, University Baptist wants to build a two-phase, 185,000-square-foot project that includes a 63,000-square-foot sanctuary, a school, an auditorium, an indoor basketball court, a video reproduction center, a 24-hour prayer center and parking for more than 1,000 cars.
Though the immediate area has several houses of worship, they are smaller community sanctuaries.
“This is a Wal-Mart compared to a boutique shop,” said attorney Jeffrey Bass, of Shubin & Bass in Miami, who represents neighbors of the planned church.
Both sides have won and lost in a court battle that began in 1997. The case has worked its way from the County Commission to circuit court, and on to the Florida Supreme Court, only to be sent back to circuit court which, late last year, upheld the church’s plan.
Earlier this month, neighbors lost their motion for a rehearing. But Bass figures they’ll try again.
“Everyone who has been fighting this was here before the church bought the property,” said former Miami-Dade County Commissioner Charles Dusseau, who since 1984 has lived next to what is now the church property.
“We feel they should have come to us first and asked if it’s something consistent with our desires for the neighborhood — not just jam it down our throats.”
On the contrary, the neighbors’ “mischief,” as church attorney Alvin Davis of Steel Hector & Davis in Miami described it, is nothing more than another example of the increasingly common “NIMBY” (Not In My Back Yard) mentality.
Many land-use attorneys in South Florida say that NIMBYs often are the biggest opponents of smart growth and mixed-use projects, whether they are commercial, residential or religious.
Indeed, land-use consultant and planner Louis Orosz says that houses of worship are poised to teach a few smart-growth lessons.
Orosz, president of Growth Management Group, has testified as an expert witness in unresolved zoning disputes involving a Hollywood synagogue and a Baptist church in unincorporated Broward County.
Municipalities are woefully ignorant about just how much nonresidential land they must set aside to maintain their future lifestyle, Orosz said, and that lifestyle includes houses of worship.
Too many cities watch elected officials and staffers come and go, and land-use and zoning decisions are done on an ad hoc basis, Orosz said.
Instead, such decisions should be part of a larger plan that would withstand the transience of politics and staffing, he added.
“Remember, the houses of worship provide sustenance of a lifestyle for the people in these areas — there is a cultural need to have this type of service available,” he said. “We may talk about fiscal issues [concerning houses of worship]. But there is a socio-cultural issue here too.”
Terry Sheridan can be reached at tsheridan@floridabiz.com or at (954) 468-2614.
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