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A rapidly growing church bought a former trucking terminal near the intersection of Interstates 70 and 675 with plans to spend about $3 million to transform the site from a trucking hub to the spiritual hub.
Lake Avenue Christian Church in New Carlisle recently purchased the former US Xpress trucking property for $1.2 million, the first step to make it the central site of its worship services and ministry. The church plans to move from its 1101 West Lake Ave. home to the new site.
“We’ve outgrown our space now,” said Randy Warner, lead pastor. “The last two months, we’ve averaged over 600” in attendance.
The property has three buildings and one existing tenant. Refurb 1, a business that reconditions trucks, is in one building that has about 40,000 square feet of space. Two other buildings have about 20,000 square feet each that will serve as the ministry’s base.
“We haven’t done much besides acquiring the property,” Warner said. “We have talked to designers. And now that we’ve closed on it, we will be moving forward.”
Warner says the church is planning to spend around another $1.2 million on its first phase of renovations, and “when we are all finished, we’re probably looking at the whole package being around $3 million.”
“We’re going to try to use what is there,” said Warner.
In the two buildings that the church plans to use, one will be a sanctuary and potentially a children’s ministry, Warner said.
“We’re also thinking a huge lobby and a maybe a cafe, too,” he said.
The second building will be a student ministry that could include some older elementary ministry, and administration offices.
Clark County Commissioner John Detrick was excited about the purchase, seeing it as a big step in the revitalization of an area that is ripe for growth.
“This is a very key intersection,” said Detrick. “It is at the intersection of two interstate highways, so it is a prime location.”
According to Detrick, 50,000 cars and 22,500 truckers pass by that intersection on I-70 daily. No traffic numbers are available for I-675.
“We’re excited that it is back in local ownership and very positive about the future of this area,” said Detrick. “We’ve got some excellent opportunities for economic growth there.”
Warner said the multi-million dollar commitment made financial sense.
“It makes a lot of sense when you consider that building new averages around $165 a square foot,” said Warner. “They were sound buildings structurally, so it just seemed the right way to go.”
Based on that $165 per square foot figure, it would have cost as much as $13 million to build the approximately 80,000 square feet of buildings on the property new.
But don’t think the goal is to build a mega church.
“We really have a different strategy,” said Warner. “What we want to try to do is create an attractional model. Obviously, we want people to know Christ. But what we want to do is, when enough people from one particular community comes to our church, to have some kind of missional effort into their community.
“This way, we kind of use those folks to bless their own community, maybe even by teaming up with another church.”
So it could be a church planting or para-church ministry, depending on the specific situation.
“Whether it would be a satellite (church) or partnering with another church, it doesn’t matter to us,” said Warner. “We had a massive plan that included a big worship area, but frankly we’re just not interested in that. It just doesn’t make sense to me. I’d rather have several churches in different areas than one big church in one area. We think the money could be spent better this way.
“At the same time, we could get snowballed, depending on how many people choose to attend. Then we’d have to consider a bigger sanctuary.”
They are striving to keep the small-town model.
“We’re a fairly small church, in a fairly small town, in an fairly unpopulated area, and this looks like an opportunity to replicate that,” Warner said. “It’s unusual, but it is more of a first century church model.”
The church has a successful outreach to the New Carlisle community, which includes a food pantry, thriving youth ministry and clothing giveaways. “We plan on keeping a presence in New Carlisle,” said Warner.
The church plans to keep the existing building, “although we’re not sure how it is going to look like. We have a thriving youth ministry there, and a gym, and a lot of kids come to it from the neighborhood who couldn’t make it to our new location,” he said.
The purchase has been on a fast track, even if the selling of the property by the former owners wasn’t.
“It’s been less than a year,” said Warner of his church’s pursuit of the purchase. “We were trying to figure out what we wanted to do about our space challenges, and I just happened to drive by and see the sign one day and found out it had been vacant for four or five years.”
The mix of business with worship even makes sense.
“That business (Refurb 1) is really our inspiration,” said Warner. “We’ve always been more about restoration. Maybe there’s a marriage ministry we can do later, or something like that. We just know that we want the theme of the place to be restoration. That’s been the history of our church; we’re a restoration movement church.”
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