Development feud: Religious enclave or community bridge?

Critics concerned project will be religious enclave

Bill Gallo, Special to the Rocky

Published July 20, 2007 at midnight

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Shopping for a nice three-bedroom townhouse in Longmont with all the latest amenities - including easy access to good schools and health care, a new pair of cross-trainers, a wide-aisle supermarket and . . . the Holy Spirit?

If the elders at the 3,000-plus- member LifeBridge Christian Church have their way, you may have such an opportunity soon.

The church's controversial Union development took crucial steps forward July 10 when the Longmont City Council gave preliminary approval on annexation, zoning and modified vested development rights for the 313-acre residential and commercial site east of town, in southwest Weld County.

But opponents pledge more fighting to come.

A formal public hearing and a final council vote on the project is set for 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Longmont Civic Center.

'No intent whatsoever'

"This is a very different kind of development," charges longtime critic Richard Juday, a retired NASA engineer.

"It would be a religious enclave, physically separated and with little chance that it would become integrated into the social fabric of the city."

Not so, say Union's planners.

LifeBridge, originally called First Christian Church, has been a solid citizen and a good neighbor in Longmont since 1889, they point out.

And the $700 million Union proposal "is no different from any other mixed-use development in Colorado or around the country," said Martin Dickey, chief executive of the Corporation for Community Christian Connections, a nonprofit founded by the church to develop the property.

"There is no intent whatsoever of becoming a religious community, of having people of like mind, like walk and like talk be affiliated," he said. "Everyone will be welcome."

Still, the 27-page master plan for Project LifeBridge - rebranded 18 months ago as Union - stresses religious faith.

"The goal of Project LifeBridge is to diminish the barrier between a church and the surrounding community," the 2004 document's unnamed author declares. "The church will be an integral part of the urban fabric and the lives of the people who live, work, play and worship there."

Plans call for some 200 apartments, condominiums and houses, 40 acres of office, commercial and retail space, a 150,000- square-foot fitness and team sport arena that would double as a worship center, health care facilities designed with special attention to the elderly, schools, and 57 acres of religious and civic space.

Critics say Union would be an exclusionary community whose "cradle-to-grave" services would further insulate it from secular life.

Economic impact studies conducted by the church and the city predict that Union would produce at least $1.2 million a year in total tax revenue and create 2,000 jobs - estimates that critics dispute.

Freedom town scuttled

The impetus for the project, Dickey says, "was relocation of the church."

As the burgeoning LifeBridge congregation approached "mega-church" status in 2001 under the leadership of its young, energetic senior minister, Rick Rusaw, it began feeling cramped by its 10-year-old campus on Longmont's north side.

It was then that church elders conceived of a community that could provide LifeBridge a suitable home "for the next 100 years," in Dickey's phrase.

The increasingly percussive battle over Union was joined on a number of fronts: tax exemptions for religious-use buildings; the annexation of the church's land, which lies outside the city limits, into Longmont itself; the church's call for vested development rights that would immunize Union's builders from city interference for up to 40 years; height-limit code exemptions for architectural details such as church steeples; and access to Longmont city services at bargain rates.

The developed city of Longmont lies almost entirely in Boulder County, with Union representing an eastern appendage into Weld.

At least one anti-Union blogger objects to what he sees as a massive influx of Republicans.

In 2003, residents in two subdivisions east of the Union site tried to incorporate a new town, called Freedom, to scuttle LifeBridge's development plan, and they sued the church.

They failed on both counts, but emotions still run high.

Mayor backs project

A software engineer, songwriter and inventor named Duane Leise was a driving force behind Freedom, and he charges that "the philosophical basis that (the LifeBridge planners) come from has never been put to a community discussion, and it never will be . . . we've been boxed out of the system."

Longmont Mayor Julia Pirnack, who cast a preliminary vote on behalf of Union, says it "will be a good project that brings value to the city."

She says she's bewildered by the vehemence of the plan's critics.

"You expect to hear the usual complaints about traffic problems and height restrictions," she said, "but I'm surprised by such resistance to a church and a church-sponsored development corporation.

"So I find myself repeating my anti-discrimination speech, which is that we don't make land-use decisions based on political or religious affiliations."

Only one council member, Karen Benker, voted against Union. She thinks the tax exemptions the church is seeking are excessive.

She doesn't believe major retailers will do business in a church-sponsored community. And she distrusts its focus.

"Is it possible that this would become a religious community? Yes," Benker said.

"It certainly sounds self-contained, cradle-to-grave. Why else would they go forward?"

By the numbers

313 acres east of Longmont would become a residential and commercial site called Union. The project would be developed by LifeBridge Christian Church.

THE PLAN'S BREAKDOWN:

• 200 condominiums, apartments and houses

• 40 acres of office, commercial and retail space

• 150,000-square-foot fitness and team sport arena that would double as a worship center

• 57 acres of religious and civic space

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