From Big Box to Big Church?

The Ridge Community Church is not named after the congregation’s first dwelling — Ridge Theater in New Berlin, where around 30 people gathered nearly five years ago.

“The Ridge” just happened to symbolize what the rapidly growing church was all about.

“We liked the idea of ‘The Ridge’ because we want people to always reach higher and never be satisfied where they are,” Pastor Mark Weigt said. “God always has more and we never want to settle for anything less than God’s best for us.”

With that in mind, if Weigt’s plan to move the RCC into the soon-to-be vacant WalMart building on Highway 100 comes to fruition, rest assured there will be no name switch to Church-Mart or anything similar.

Weigt and the RCC has an accepted offer to purchase the , and has a proposed plan to convert much of the 110,000-square-foot building into its new permanent dwelling.

The offer is contingent on the City of Greenfield agreeing to rezone the land from regional business district to either institutional or mixed use, and changing the city’s land use plan from planned business to either community facilities or planned mixed use.

“It proposes significant land-use issues, given what the expectations or the desires are along Highway 100,” said Community Development Director Chuck Erickson. “The desire is for high-end businesses to be there. The land use plan looks at that as one of our major (commercial) corridors.”

The Ridge has been trying to make a permanent home in Greenfield for some time. In November 2011, the city’s Common Council voted 4-1 in favor of rezoning land just down the road from Wal-Mart, the 9500/9700 blocks of West Layton Avenue, from residential to institutional , but the agreement to .

At the time, Weigt expressed his desire to find a permanent home for his congregation, which now meets at Whitnall High School, somewhere in or around Greenfield. Enter the approximately 10-acre parcel Wal-Mart property.

“Greenfield is a great location because it is centrally located,” Weigt said. “Moreover, the people and leaders of Greenfield have made us feel very welcome, and we want to in turn help the community anyway that we can. It would be an honor for us to be there.

“We also believe this location gives us the opportunity to rejuvenate this structurally sound building versus the potential of having another vacated big box building sitting empty for who knows how long. This will be a huge win-win for us and the community of Greenfield.”

The non-denominational church’s plan calls for it to utilize approximately 49,200 square feet for its church now, which has a congregation of about 500 people. An additional 12,300 square feet would be retained for future church use. The remaining 49,100 would be leased to long-term commercial users.

The church’s initial proposal has it renovating and using the southernmost portion of the existing building, and leasing the northern section.

“When most people think of church buildings, they think of a traditional church building,” Weigt said. “With this new proposal, we want to create a very modern-looking facility that does not look like a church building, but instead is a building that has church activities in it and blends well with other area buildings.  … The biggest potential obstacle will be overcoming the initial response of thinking that we want to turn that building into a traditional church looking facility, which we won't do.”

For those hoping for another big-box retailer to fill the building, Erickson said don’t hold your breath. He said Wal-Mart has restrictions written into its sales agreement giving most national retailers that need a large amount of square footage no chance to take over the soon-to-be-vacant building and become a direct competitor to the new super Wal-Mart.

“The fact that the RCC wants to use a majority of the building and have a lease entity in the other portion, that’s a good thing,” Erickson said. “The question is, is it better to have something in there than say, nothing, and will it be easier to fill the balance of the building?”

When the RCC was interested in the Layton Avenue land, it volunteered to participate in the city’s payment in lieu of taxes, or PILOT ordinance, which is set up for the city to recover its portion of the overall tax rate. The value of the Layton properties was $1.04 million. The Wal-Mart property has an assessed value of $7.2 million, $4.1 million for the land and $3.1 million for improvements, and the city’s portion of the property tax is more than $50,000.

If the city decided to rezone part of the land institutional to make way for the church, only the portion used by the church would be available for the PILOT program. Weigt said it is too early in the process to address the church’s potential PILOT participation.

Erickson said the city has never encountered this sort of unusual mixed-use rezoning scenario in the past, but is aware of examples just like this one working.

“The general premise throughout the country isn’t brand new, but it’s new for us,” Erickson said. “We’ll be taking baby steps with this.”

The issue will be discussed by the Plan Commission on April 10, and Erickson expects public hearing to take place no sooner than June or July.