Church Eyes West Side Home ; First Baptist is Aiming to Accomplish Its Move to the New Site By Year’s End

By ANDREA SCHOELLKOPF Journal Staff Writer

First Baptist Church says it hopes to have its move to the West Side complete by the end of the year.

Church officials will appear before the city’s Environmental Planning Commission on Jan. 18 to seek approval for a building permit — a 124,336-square-foot building on 13.66 acres on the northeast corner of Paseo del Norte and Richland Hills.

The downtown church is currently about 90,000 square feet on the northwest corner of Broadway and Central, with seating capacity of 1,000, said Kyle Childress, associate pastor and administrator.

But will it be a megachurch for West Siders?

“It depends on what your definition of megachurch is,” said Childress, who recently moved here from northeast Texas where churches can seat up to 10,000 congregants.

Comparatively, Hoffmantown Church is 175,000 and Calvary Chapel 110,000 square feet respectively, though both have larger seating capacities. Legacy Church on the West Side seats nearly 2,900.

The new First Baptist will offer some of those megachurch amenities, such as a bookstore and coffee shop. The church also will include an outdoor amphitheater and bike

trail along Paseo del Norte. Dallas-based HHH Architects was hired to come up with the plans.

The $4 million first phase will be the Youth Worship Building — something the downtown church lacks — which will seat 400 to 500 worshippers until the main sanctuary can be built. It will seat 1,500.

The downtown service currently draws about 300 to 400 worshippers on Sunday.

“We’re expecting some great growth,” he said. “… There just seems to be a stigma about people driving Downtown. One of the things we’re looking to (do is) to be where the people are.”

In an attempt to start its West Side presence this year, First Baptist held a vacation Bible school under tents at the new location last summer, Childress said, but “it was a mess” due to winds blowing the tents over.

The church is in the process of selling some of its vacant Downtown properties, including a few acres south of Central, to pay for the initial construction, he said. The church itself, along with the seven acres it sits on, has not yet been put on the market.

The church intends to relocate its adjacent Noon Day Ministry elsewhere Downtown and continue to offer services at that location, Childress said.

Chief concerns from West Side neighbors have so far been any potential for a future cellular phone tower — which the church does not have plans for — as well as requests to landscape the 10-foot curbs, which are city right-of-way, said expediter Bob Golden of Golden Associates LLC.

(c) 2007 Albuquerque Journal. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.