EVERETT — A mega-church in Everett’s Riverside neighborhood substantially scaled back an expansion plan, which included tearing down one of the city’s oldest houses and replacing it with a parking lot.
After a sometimes bitter two-year feud with neighbors, Bethany Christian Assembly is selling two of three properties that it owns with an affiliated foundation and is no longer interested in buying the rest of the block to accommodate future growth.
It is keeping one house for possible missionary quarters, said Bruce French, business administrator of the growing Pentecostal church.
The church had planned to buy all of the houses on a block of Baker Avenue with the intention to demolish the buildings in order to build a youth center or some other church-related structure.
Angry neighbors, who took to picketing Sunday morning services last year, feared the church’s plans would clash with the character of the neighborhood, which is filled with restored homes from the early 1900s.
“It wasn’t worth making enemies with people we’re trying to reach,” French said. “We’re trying to help the city, not hurt it.”
In late July, the church sold a house at 2619 Baker Avenue for $375,000 to M.J. Properties of Bothell, which owns more than a dozen apartment buildings in Everett, including the J.J. Clark Mansion and Marlborough Apartments on 21st Street and Rucker Avenue. Bethany also placed another home it owns a few doors down on the market.
Mike Eggerling, who owns M.J. Properties with his wife, Leslie Eggerling, painted the house and said he will finish up restoration work, including a new lawn and driveway, by spring.
The house they bought was built in 1903 for Ambrose Sherwood, an educator and principal who later became one of the first superintendents of Everett public schools.
During the Great Depression, the house was converted into a seven-unit apartment, as it remains today. Eggerling said he intends on bringing it back to its past grandeur and renting out furnished units to contractors on extended stays in Everett.
“It will get restored quite nicely inside,” he said. “We trick them out, we redo all the old hardwood and moldings and we redo the common areas with antiques. I’m sure the neighbors will be really thrilled by the time we’re done.”
M.J. Donovan-Creamer, an active Riverside neighborhood association member who lives in a 1906 craftsman home across from the saved house, said others can learn from their efforts.
A city planner who reviewed the church’s plan initially recommended approval of the parking lot. After residents lobbied against the project, the recommendation was withdrawn, and ultimately overturned by a city hearing examiner.
“We know that if you stand up, you get your facts straight, and you don’t back down, you’re formidable,” Donovan-Creamer said. “We do have rights as neighborhoods.”
Bethany also had a right as a property owner to appeal the hearing examiner’s decision. French said he believed the church had a strong enough case to prevail if it decided to go to court.
Even so, he said a legal battle would be a distraction to the church’s mission.
Looking back, French said the church could have done a better job informing neighbors of its intentions.
“You cannot over-communicate,” he said. “That’s the lesson in this.”
The parking lot wasn’t the church’s only rub with neighbors.
Bethany also riled neighbors last year with plans to build a soup kitchen at a church it took over at 2208 Baker Ave.
The church wanted to create a place to minister to people struggling with problems that often put people on the street, such as financial reversals, divorce and addiction.
Steve Fox, a Riverside resident who is leading an effort to create a historic district in the neighborhood, said he believes Bethany’s move was gracious.
“They learned a lot from this, I’m sure. I don’t think they were being vindictive,” Fox said. “But they were causing some bad will in the neighborhood and it’s going to take some time to repair that.”
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