Pitkin County, Colo., where the Grace Church now will be allowed to build a church on its property |
God will get a home in the ritzy and elite Roaring Fork Valley which includes the resort locale of Aspen after a board of local officials decided that federal law did not allow them to simply ban a church construction project on land the congregation owns.
The Pitkin County commissioners, who supervise land use decisions for the hills and valleys around Aspen, have reached a settlement with Grace Church of the Roaring Fork Valley that overturns a 2005 county ruling that banned the congregation from building on an 18-acre site near the tiny settlement of Emma.
Plans now are being developed for a building of about 15,000 square feet, which will include a sanctuary of roughly 8,600 square feet, or about the same size as most Aspen area residences these days, according to a report in the Aspen Daily News.
Parishioners in the Grace Church group have been meeting in the Eagle County Community Center in El Jebel since the church's founding in 2002, the pastor told WND.
The county first ruled that the church violated its land-use code and master plan, and "did not fit" with the rural nature of the valley, according to county attorney John Ely.
However, the settlement, reached just days ago, prevented the need for a trial that was scheduled to begin yesterday in federal court on church claims against the county under the federal Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000.
That law essentially requires local governments to allow churches to grow and develop facilities on their own properties, unless there is an overriding government need for a limit.
The battle began in 2003 when the church group, which was launched by the pastor and some members following the closure of another church in the area, bought the land and sought to begin developing it.
The decision to allow the church construction was described by County Commissioner Jack Hatfield as "gut-wrenching," while Commissioner Michael Owsley said the commissioners were forced into the situation. "You feel that you're letting down the people who put their trust in you," he told the newspaper.
Ely had warned the county that its efforts to prevent the church from building on its own land would not be successful.
"You can't deny people a right to practice their faith," Robert A. Lees, a Denver lawyer working on the church situation, told the newspaper. "They could not do anything else, otherwise we could got at them for a lot of damages."
Pastor Terry Maner said the congregation wants to be a good neighbor in the community, and already has donated a one-acre parcel of land to local government for a fueling facility, and altered its building plans in order to accommodate neighbors' demands.
Maner, who heads up the interdenominational church, told WND the congregation began with only about a dozen members from the old Basalt Bible Church, which was closed. "We wanted to honor the history of that church in the past, and start over," he said. "The church now has about 130 people involved in the congregation."
Lees told the local newspaper that the issue was clear from the outset, when he attended a planning board meeting in which people opposed the church.
"You can't impair somebody's right to worship because of a personal opinion or the fact that something is not in harmony with something else. There is a substantial burden that has to be met by the county," he said at the time.
He told WND that the settlement will allow the church to build, but there still are details to be discussed. He also said there is a second part to the case, that of a damages claim by the church because of the government-forced delay of construction, which would include such issues as higher construction costs.
Commissioners opposed the building because of the rural nature of the land, and residents of Emma said they didn't want their mountain views obstructed, or their roads laden with Sunday-morning traffic.
But Ely also explained that county commissioners, by reaching a settlement, could obtain commitments from the church for future development. If the issue went to trial, he said, the county could risk giving up any input into anything developed on the property.
"It's not going to feel like the country anymore when a mega-church moves in," area resident Tilly Maddux told the newspaper.
The project already had been proposed to blend in with the rural character of the region, with architectural elements of a country barn, church officials said.
As WND reported earlier in another case with similar circumstances, the city of Lake Elsinore, Calif., paid the Elsinore Christian Center $1.205 million for its opposition to church plans to build in its own property. That case began in 2000.
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