'For-sale’ signs dot church properties
It’s rare to see a large church property come on the market, a fact local real estate agents are hoping will attract interest in the 22,000-square-foot former Asbury United Methodist Church.
The church on Pinecroft Road just went on the market for $875,000.
“You can’t build a church, nearly for the price you can get this church,” said real estate agent Richard Montana , from what sounds like a perfected pitch.
Highways “220, 421, 85 and 40 all meet up right here,” said Montana, one of the property’s listing agents at CB Richard Ellis of Greensboro, between showings of the Pinecroft Road property earlier this week.
Churches “don’t become available very often at all,” said Denis Speckman of Price Commercial Properties in High Point, the listing agent for High Point’s B’nai Israel Synagogue and the former New Beginnings Baptist Church. Both have had high traffic from prospective buyers.
“I could have sold the church property 10 times over, the synagogue property 20 times over to interested churches,” Speckman said. “They all have big ideas and big visions, but no money to back them up.”
While most churches become available when congregations outgrow them, Asbury’s membership had dwindled from more than 300 members over the years to fewer than 30 people on most Sundays.
Members held their last service June 7.
The sprawling church complex includes a main sanctuary and smaller chapel, a floor mostly earmarked for Sunday school or nursery classrooms, and a commercial stainless steel kitchen.
Even as the church could barely afford the electricity, members served meals to the hungry in the spacious fellowship hall once a week. The church was also home to the community’s Neighborhood Watch.
“I hope it’s not torn down and another condo put there,” said former longtime member Nancy Harper, 82, who has since joined another church, where she is now a Sunday school teacher.
Just inside the front doors is a walk-in coat room and sanctuary doors that open to forest-green carpeting and mustard yellow cushioned pews, with grand candelabras and recessed lighting overhead. Holes in the wall behind where the choir sat on Sunday mornings are signs that the cross once hung there.
Largely, the only remnants of the Asbury congregation linger in the plaque — “To the glory of God/ In memory of C. Warner Stamey 1973” — still attached to the organ.
Interest has come from existing congregations looking for satellite locations and from smaller churches looking for room to grow.
“I talked to someone this morning who was really hoping we’d give them the building,” said Greensboro United Methodist district superintendent Frank “Duke” Ison.
Another Methodist congregation could have had the building for free, but money from a sale to anyone else goes back into the denomination’s ministry and missions.
Ison is hoping another congregation can grow there.
It is something Asbury couldn’t do in recent years. The aging membership tried sharing the building with other fledging ministries, including the Korean Presbyterian Church, but expensive monthly utility bills signaled problems.
An African American assistant pastor was brought in to help connect with the increasingly diverse neighborhoods around the church. But pews remained empty.
Eventually, there wasn’t enough money to pay into the pastor’s pension and keep up with the utility bills, something Methodist ministries are required to do.
Eventually, reality set in when the church couldn’t pay a $900 utility bill. The pastor was reassigned to a church in Asheville, and the district took the property over.
“We still talk and we’re still in mourning,” Harper said of those who lingered to the end. “It was a family.”
Contact Nancy McLaughlin at 373-7049 or nancy.mclaughlin@news-record.com
Accompanying Photos
Photo Caption: The church building at 2227 Pinecroft Road in Greensboro.
CHURCHES FOR SALE
Available Guilford County church properties, according to the most recent updates on www.loopnet.com:
Most recent occupant: Destiny Christian Fellowship
Location: 560 Farragut Street (I-40 and Randleman Road)
Price: $1.95 million
Features: 14,000-square-foot building; 700 seats; balcony
Most recent occupant: B’nai Israel Synagogue
Location: 1207 Kensington Drive, High Point
Price: $1.6 million
Features: 16,000-square-foot building; residential neighborhood
Most recent occupant: Triad Community Church
Location: 922 Gallimore Dairy Road, High Point (I-40 and N.C. 68)
Price: $850,000
Features: 6,660-square-foot building; zoned agricultural
Most recent occupant: New Beginnings Baptist Church
Location: 210 Fraley Road, High Point (off South Main Street)
Price: $198,500
Features: 3,135-square-foot building; separate Sunday school and day care room
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