HP Presbyterian Posts Lot Updates Online
So earlier this week, I plugged the blog site of a neighborhood group that opposes construction of a new parking lot at Highland Park Presbyterian Church. To be fair, you should probably see this, too, from HPPC — it’s a newly updated project page (from whence I lifted the illustration above) full of plans that will be distributed in hard copy to churchgoers.
Thoughts?
By Georgia Fisher
May. 7, 2010 | 1:34 pm | 19 Comments | Comments RSS
19 comments to "HP Presbyterian Posts Lot Updates Online "
1. I hope to teach my kids to drive there someday.
2. Since my kids are still young we will skateboard, ripstick and rollerblade there now.
3. I love our neighbors and hope this all gets figured out with minimal pain.
4. I would like someone to build me a pool in my backyard.
The design is flawed and the processes employed by the church is perhaps the most un-Christian series of acts I have witnessed. The church leadership and the Elders (almost none of whom live in the impacted community) have behaved appallingly toward those that live in sight of the proposed structure.
If the church is serious about a parking structure they need to tear down the terrible houses they wish to keep, based on the current plan. What they are not telling the world about these run down properties is that they produce rental income. Of course they don’t want to tear them down and lose income.
I only hope that the church realizes what a galvanizing force it has become. Every Elder and member of the church should be ashamed and seriously ask themselves if they believe the scripture and the notion of “do unto others…”
Fred
Until I saw the plans, I didn’t know that the lot would be tucked behind homes that HPPC already owns. Is it really going to be a huge eye-sore for the neighbors? No one will see it or be contiguous to it. Did the neighbors know that there was a church in their immediate vicinity when they chose to live there? Probably since the church has been there longer than most of its current neighbors. Active vibrant churches involve traffic. You knew that when you chose to become their neighbor.
I find it interesting that the neighbors jump to the worst possible scenario. I think the plans look really good – like others have said – much better than expected. HPPC is a beautiful building/property. Do you think it looks better or worse than it did on paper when it was originally conceived? My guess is that is looks much better. Maybe the parking lot will too.
What you, the church session, and others who support the parking lot seem not to understand is that we also realized that the entire 3900 block of McFarlin and University was zoned for single family homes. Are you aware of the effect that planned developments have on surrounding home values? In the words of at least two appraisers, values of neighboring houses will decrease “without doubt,” possibly by as much as twenty-five percent. I am disinclined to believe that you or any other individual would calmly acquiesce to the displacement of two neighboring families, the erection of an incongruous wall in place of houses across the street, and the loss of up to one quarter of your most important personal asset if such a possibility were imminent in your own backyard, yet you seem to have no qualms doing so when such a contingency affects only others.
Levelheaded: I would be very reticent to tell anyone to be ashamed of himself were I not personally acquainted with all the details of the case at hand. Fred is not trying to “make the entire church sound evil,” and to construct such a straw man argument from his post is very spurious on your part. His comments do, however, attest to the frustration that many of the neighbors have felt over the last year regarding the church’s rather dismissive attitude our opinions, suggestions, and personal wellbeing. Are you aware that we submitted at least five alternative proposals—such as offering valet parking, petitioning the city to open dozens of new parallel parking places on side streets, and shuttling churchgoers from the nearby firehouse parking lot on Sundays—that were rejected without hardly a nod by church leadership? Are you aware that HPPC used to be over twice its current size but survived perfectly well without a parking lot across the street? You are of course free to pass shame wherever you please, but I would be sure that I were familiar with the entire dialogue that has transpired before doing so too liberally.
When we bought our home, we did NOT know that the church owned that entire block of houses. No sign was posted. No one announced it to us. This is a big, horrible, stressful surprise to most of us that the church could rip down homes right in front of ours and put up a parking lot.
No matter how you illustrate it, it’s STILL A PARKING LOT and unwanted by 300 neighbors and growing. “Do unto others” appears just to be something HPPC teaches children in Sunday School, but feels no need to adhere to as adults.
This uproar from the neighbors is not really about the parking lot. We are upset because of the potential RE-ZONING OF AN ENTIRE RESIDENTIAL BLOCK AND THE INEVITABLE LOSS OF TEN HOMES (some deemed “historical”) and FUTURE EXPANSION OF THE CHURCH campus. In a recent meeting with a neighbor, Rev. Scates did not even deny this. He said, well, if the church didn’t expand, we wouldn’t be sitting in the Hunt Building right now! You can bet that when HPPC gets the money, those houses are going to come down, and that block is going to look a whole lot different.
Can’t you understand why we neighbors are horrified that HPPC, originally conceived as a “neighborhood church,” is now turning against its own neighborhood, by usurping an entire block in the heart of our city, on the main “showboat” boulevard? We have MANY HUNDREDS of residents now saying, we don’t want this, but the church has no problem ignoring us, and even worse, making it sound on their website that we are actually on board! We have asked Mark Story repeatedly to stop misrepresenting us as a compliant happy bunch–we are anything but! What kind of Christian values are they expressing with this dishonest, aggressive and selfish attack on our neighborhood? Love thy neighbor…except when you want something?!
The worst case scenerio on the proposed parking-lot, by the way, has already been built by Rev. Scates’ church in Baltimore, when he was head pastor. At Central Presbyterian on York Street they took over park land and added a huge mass of concrete with a few scrawny trees, in spite of the neighbors “big uproar.” You can look at it for yourself an see what we fear, since at this moment HPPC does not have the funds for that pretty drawing you have been shown.
Just go to Google Earth Maps, type in “7308 York, Baltimore,” and put the viewer into satellite mode. Zoom into the most NW parking lot–that is the one Scates installed. Not very pretty, and a huge scar on God’s planet.
Echo, please buy yourself some cute flats and help save our neighborhood and the flagship and ONLY boulevard in U.P. God doesn’t care what you wear on your feet and Jesus is quite famous for walking everywhere in those great sandals. We would love your support and be forever thankful to church members willing to walk that extra minute or 2, once a week, in order to keep our neighborhood great!
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