Converting a church to alternate purposes

This depends HUGELY on the design and construction of the original church. Churches vary very very much.

As a disgressive aside, back in the 1970s, when I was a grad student in geology, I was doing my dissertation field project in southeastern Kansas. There, I came across a little town called Tyro, situated right on the border of Oklahoma, near the bigger town of Coffeyville (famed for a botched Dalton Gang robbery back in 1892).

Tyro, a community nearly defunct, boasted a defunct church, which had occupied a previously defunct bank. The title of this place, painted in garish yellow letters, Peter Max style, was "The First National Bank of Jesus". A smaller stencilled sign on the door read "Come on in and open an eternal savings account".

caw

* http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-dalton-gang-is-wiped-out-in-coffeyville-kansas

Posting from a tablet makes it hard to cut and paste. But google for a case in MA where a couple did just that. The diocese cancelled the sale and the couple sued. I don't know if it's been settled yet.

Even if the church could/did put a limitation on the buyer, I suspect it wouldn't extend to a future sale - so you could have someone buy the church, decide not to use it after all, and turn around and sell it to your characters, thus removing any possibility of the church having a say.

Captcha said:

I know a lot of people buy old churches and convert them into residences. I want one of my characters to buy an old church and convert it into a for-hire wedding chapel, focusing mainly on gay weddings.

I've been unable to find out whether this would likely be possible. Do churches tend to put limiting terms in their sales agreements to make sure the building isn't used for something that would bring the religion into disrepute? If necessary, I can make sure that my church was from a gay-friendly sect of Christianity, but if this isn't an issue I'd rather not mention it at all.

Does anyone know what agreements for church sales usually look like?

Click to expand...

I see the response in which this was apparently a thing but that seems to be before a sale was finalized.

I've never heard of an issue with something like that, though could certainly be more pervasive than I'm aware. Catholicism doesn't hold that a church building is sacred in and of itself - it's a building. I dunno about other religions specifically.

Not only do people turn churches into (really cool) residences, I know of an art gallery and there are several night clubs in old churches, among other things.

If it may be a thing, you could go Episcopal as you note - they have very church-looking churches and are gay friendly. If you google 'the Limelight NYC' you can see one of the nightclubs - that was an Episcopal church.

Here's a church turning into an upholstery business: http://www.leaderherald.com/page/content.detail/id/555957.html

And one turned into a bookstore (albeit in Holland): http://holyhomes-convertedchurches.blogspot.com/2010/11/13th-century-church-converted-into.html

If you want to be absolutely sure, check out some churches for sale on LoopNet (http://www.loopnet.com/Churches-For-Sale/) and inquire with the brokers about restrictions.

The Church of the Holy Communion in NYC is a landmarked historic church. It was sold in the 1970s to serve as drug rehab, which in turn sold the place to a club businessman in the early 1980s. The church venue had been used as a prominent nightclub The Limelight until 2007.

I think to make it easier for the transition, you can have an extra party and extra time lapse involved, making it hard or impossible for the parish to do anything.

Captcha said:

The design and construction would affect whether someone was allowed to use it for weddings?

Click to expand...

I was thinking more of conversion into a residence, which was part of the original question. As for weddings, hell, you can perform them outdoors.

caw

Perhaps the church originally belonged to some minor breakaway sect, that overextended itself in building the church, the membership dropped away, the group was forced into receivership, and the receivers don't care as long as they get their money. It might have taken a generation to sort out the financial/legal details, so there's no-one to really oppose it, unless some local trouble-maker decides to start trouble in the name of the long-gone Repenters.
Unless the story is about the legalities of re-purposing a church, call it 'the First (and last) Church of the Truly Repentant', and let it go at that. Unless, as I say, lawyers and protests play a large part in your story.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/ma...ex-weddings/QrdnHOSuZfWmb6keBwLnxK/story.html

Not a church, a building owned by the Catholic church as a retreat center where masses had been performed.

What do you want to happen in your story? If you want this to happen with little fuss, just don't tell the sellers what the buyers intend.

If you want a fuss, the Northbridge case is worth looking into.

Maryn said:

I think what he was saying was, the seller of a property has no legal right to limit what a property is used for by its new owner. They can refuse to sell if they oppose the new use to which the church will be put, but once the transaction is complete, the new owner can do any damned thing he or she chooses with their own building, whether it was once a church or not.

Click to expand...

Yeah, unless the laws have changed since I was in real estate (and in this circumstance, it seems unlikely), the seller could not put restrictions on what the buyer did with the property, unless the seller was also acting as the banker (what we used to call a 'contract for deed'; don't know what they call it now). Even so, they could only control things such as physical changes that could devalue the property. So barring legal restrictions (such as zoning laws, etc), your buyer would be free to do whatever they wanted once they went through the closing.

I was under the impression that restrictive covenants on a property could constrain its use by future owners (e.g. to forbid specific business activities) - but I don't know what the limitations are on them (except that racially exclusionary covenants are no longer valid), or how they get lifted or enforced, so probably more research with respect to the law in the specific jurisdiction is in order...

Captcha said:

Do churches tend to put limiting terms in their sales agreements to make sure the building isn't used for something that would bring the religion into disrepute?

Click to expand...

Nope. Otherwise they'd never sell. Depending on where you're located, it's often illegal to put such covenants into a sale.

Keep in mind that most churches are not sold without a good reason. No congregation, church built a new location, etc. If there was still any demand for a church to be used for a specific purpose, it normally wouldn't be up for sale.

Jeff

The restrictive covenants typically occur in gated communities, or neighborhoods that require membership, and even those are subject to legal scrutiny. Not sure a church would even be included, any more than a business would. Zoning restrictions would affect them, but otherwise it's doubtful. The only clear inclusion would be an historic district, and that typically only covers the structure and signage, but not "content".

Restrictive covenants are commonly found today in relation with gated communities - but historically that has not necessarily been the case (esp. since gated communities and HOAs are a fairly recent development and restrictive covenants are a very old legal practice). They were formerly, frex, extremely common as a way to exclude unwanted racial, ethnic & religious groups from a neighborhood or even a whole town. They were also used to exclude types of business from a building that someone deemed undesirable (noisy, smelly, immoral, etc.) even if zoning regs would permit them. I suspect there are probably a lot of geographical variations in their use.

I have encountered deed restrictions of various sorts in a variety of properties. Such a restriction could keep the property from being put to a specific use, but the restictions must be limited in time; the life of a "perpetual" restriction can be 25 years, or less. One problem with restrictions in the deed is that they may not be enforceable. Another thing is that the seller is the one with the power to invoke the restriction, so the seller has to be aware that there was a restriction and that ther may be a violation. The ownership of churches can be kind of strange, especially with small churches. The property may belong to the association, to the minister, or to someone else. For major denominations churches usually belong to the bishop in the region, but that varies in some states.

So make it easy and don't mention what church it was and don't have any restriction. You don't need those.

There are a lot of reasons for a restrictive covenant. A house donated to a charity could have a covenant where the ownership reverts to the donor if the charity ceases to use the property for the purpose defined. But a covenant based on race, creed, sex, religion, place of national origin or sexual orientation is generally unenforceable or illegal. As are most covenants that restrict use of the property in any legal manner.

However, another possibility, if you need a conflict in your story, is that property zoned for a church will often revert to the base type of property around it if it is no longer used as a church. Such as a church in a residential zoning that cannot now be used for a business.

Jeff

WeaselFire said:

But a covenant based on race, creed, sex, religion, place of national origin or sexual orientation is generally unenforceable or illegal. As are most covenants that restrict use of the property in any legal manner.

Click to expand...

The rest are based on federal law. But a restriction based on sexual orientation would only be illegal in some jurisdictions. MA for example. Most states allow discrimination based on sexual orientation.

I think it's down to what Captcha wants for hir story. It sounds like either conflict or no problem are both quite possible.

Sat Nam! (literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)

For the record, a group of Sikhs in the town I used to live in purchased a Lutheran church and turned it into a Gurdwara. We not only had no problems, but the Lutherans went to bat for us when we had a hate crime at the Gurdwara, and asked me to speak at two of their functions.

So it depends on your selling congregation.

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal

Bing Zabriskie said:

The Church of the Holy Communion in NYC is a landmarked historic church. It was sold in the 1970s to serve as drug rehab, which in turn sold the place to a club businessman in the early 1980s. The church venue had been used as a prominent nightclub The Limelight until 2007.

Click to expand...

Now it's a mall, which isn't quite a gay-wedding chapel, but, well, Matthew 21:12