St. John Baptist Church has started construction on a sanctuary and fellowship hall on a 10 acre plot near Locust Park. Construction of religious buildings in Columbia has been a rare sight in our town's 42 year history. Now this site has become an eyesore entrenched between Owen Brown and Long Reach.On September 20, 2007, Howard County school board officials finalized a deal to exchange 10 acres of land off Tamar Drive and Route 175 in Columbia for a 41 acre plot near the intersection of Marriotsville road and Route 40 in Ellicott City.
The Howard County school board has become more aggressive over the last few years in acquiring acres for future school sites. In the transaction with St. John Baptist Church, the school board acquired the 41 acre plot owned by the church for $2.7 million. Roughly $1.7 million was spent acquiring the land, the other million went directly to the church.
Church leaders have said that the new site is more convenient for their congregants than renting space at their old location, off Route 108. Convenience does not justify building this church in my opinion. I grew up attending services at interfaith centers until high school.
Religion no longer has a place in my life, but I'm still an ardent supporter of communal congregation sites in Columbia. Of course there are worship sites outside of interfaith centers in Columbia, parcels of land that never sold to the Rouse Company but this site is an outrage to everything Columbia stands for.
Are our children's educations really worth a Baptist Church in Columbia? This is how it starts. I've heard from other residents that the Methodists plan to build an extension to the Wilde Lake interfaith center. If the Baptists get theirs, every denomination will want theirs too, starting a sort of turf war. This building is unacceptable and needs to be torn down!
3 comments:
This is the kind of content I was looking for you to add to your blog. The interviews are very interesting, but as a Columbia resident, so is your perspective on the town and anything that happens to it. Good work.
What Dana said!!
So are you afraid that empty plots will go to build more churches and fewer schools?
I very much agree with you. Bringing people together, rather than splitting them apart is at the heart of the Columbia experience. Interfaith Centers are a part of that experience. Individual places of worship are not.
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