On Sept. 15, the Petra Presbyterian Church sold the only permanent home it ever had at a substantial loss.
The church has no plans to replace its Northbrook building, but the Rev. Christian Jinho Kim said the sale was cause for celebration.
“We have suffered for a long time,” Kim told the members of his congregation Sunday during their usual meeting in rented space in a Glenview Lutheran church. “Now, we start a new chapter at the Petra Presbyterian Church.”
In 2000, the predominantly Korean congregation had about 150 families and felt it had outgrown the borrowed sanctuary. A $2.7 million former furniture warehouse in Northbrook’s Sky Harbor industrial park was purchased with plans to convert the space into the congregation’s first permanent home.
The church moved right into 3005 MacArthur Drive. But when members tried to formally win a zoning change from Northbrook, they were turned down. They later sued the village in federal court.
On Sunday, only 15 people attended Petra’s noon services at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, 2328 Central Road. The stress of raising money to maintain the 54,000 square-foot building has taken its toll, Kim said. “People get so discouraged,” he said.
Despite the loss in Friday’s $1.85 million sale, the church has no debt left, he said.
In a preliminary hearing, the Northbrook Village Board Sept. 12 found the buyer of the property a good fit for the building, and referred them to the village Plan Commission for hearings.
The buyers are led by BTR Chicago, an Evanston-based repair firm specializing in foreign car repair. The building will also be used for storage of expensive cars, a body shop, parts storage and offices.
The new plan requires a special permit and minor zoning variations, so Village President Sandy Frum said she was glad to hear of the closing. It was a better move, she said, than that made by Petra 17 years ago, which closed the deal on the property before it could get a major zoning change.
“Don’t get ahead of the board,” Frum, a village trustee in 2000, said Tuesday.
At Petra’s 2001 preliminary hearing, the trustees had been wary, but not negative, she remembered.
“When the Board saw the proposal originally, we were somewhat intrigued,” she said. “We didn’t see at the time the conflict with the industrial park. The Plan Commission saw it, and they’re the ones that came back with all the issues.”
Those issues involved the expected weekday uses of the prospective church. Members, including children, would enter and leave the building for religious school and other events, and might be endangered by trucks and the chemicals used in neighboring buildings. Sky Harbor property owners said they feared they might never be able to sell their buildings because of risks from proximity to a church.
Petra drew back its application to regroup. The village then changed its laws to forbid all “assembly uses” in Sky Harbor to avoid religious discrimination claims at the time, officials said then. But the church sued the village in 2003 on that basis. A federal judge backed the village three years later, agreeing that it was protecting industrial zoning, not opposing religious uses.
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A pro-religion law firm donated a third of Petra’s legal costs, with the church on the hook for the rest.
The building had been outmoded for most warehouse uses since the 1990s, Kim said. “We had a very difficult time selling the property,” he said.
Kim, who came to Petra in 2006, said the congregation has no plans for a new home.
“We will see what God has for us in the future,” he told his congregation. “We will forget mistakes, put them behind us, and press on.”