It may not be the House of God, but a 1,500-square-foot home on Greytwig Lane certainly seems heaven-sent to its neighbor, Christ by the Sea Methodist Church.
An anonymous donor funded the half-million-dollar transaction that will enable the church to move its offices across the street, along with its growing youth program. That will allow Marcos Flores’ expanding choir, which recently has had to practice in a hallway, to return to what had been meant to be the music room.
The decision to buy the 36-year-old three-bedroom house came after a church committee looked carefully at building an addition to the church, and even had architectural drawings done. That idea was nixed due to cost, said the Reverend Cliff Melvin. “We were looking at several million dollars,” he said.
The house, which sits on a quarter-acre lot adjacent to an existing church parking lot fronting A1A, was not on the market. But when the committee approached its owners, “the husband and wife were already considering putting it on the market, thinking they were going to move closer to their kids in Boca Raton,” Melvin said.
“We had an appraisal done and what we paid was a significant amount over the appraisal,” he said. “We needed the property. It was the spot we wanted and we did what we had to do to get it.”
That was in late April.
After the requisite neighborhood meeting in late October showed no opposition to the plan, the long process of permitting is now underway, with a zoning variance hearing set for January. “That’s the earliest we could get it scheduled,” says Melvin. “Then we have to go for a building permit. We’re still two or three months out from that.
“If you’d asked me in June, I would have thought we would have been in by now. The wheels of government turn slowly.”
The church’s main building will need renovation as well, he says. The exterior of the house won’t change appreciably in appearance, except for a sign out front.
Since his arrival five years ago, the church’s congregation has experienced “a very steady turn upwards,” says Melvin. “We were in a bit of a decline for a few years.”
In season, attendance for Sunday worship averages 500; it drops to around half that in summer.
