The pastor of a church that has fought Marietta since 2006 for a permit to build a new facility says city officials have agreed to review the church’s application to build a house of worship and school on Powder Springs Street.
But early this week, there appeared to be a hitch, Pastor Frederick Anderson of Covenant Christian Ministries said. City officials told him they couldn’t find the $40,000 worth of paperwork, designs and fees the church submitted with its 2010 application for a special use permit.
On Friday, the city said it has the documents.
“I have no reason to think they were ever lost," Anderson said. "They were just giving us the same runaround they’ve been giving us for five years.”
Marietta Mayor Steve Tumlin and city attorney Douglas Haynie said they could not comment because the case is still in litigation. In 2006 the church filed a lawsuit against the city after its application for a building permit was rejected.
The majority black, nondenominational church, which has operated out of a facility on Fairground Street since 2001, has sought to expand since 2004, when it bought an 8-acre lot for $1.6 million with plans to build a 800-seat church, school and playing field.
The city said the church is inappropriate because the land is zoned residential, although it abuts a shopping center on Powder Springs Street.
Anderson said the city has granted building permits to other churches in the five years since Covenant submitted its application and his church is being discriminated against. "The only religious groups that have difficulty in getting a permit is anyone that differs from the elite groups within the city," Anderson said.
He said that pattern goes back at least to 2004 when the city denied a building permit to the Georgia Brazilian Assembly of God, which wanted to build a church on South Marietta Parkway, and the church sued, saying the zoning ordinance violated federal law.
At the time Marietta’s zoning ordinance allowed religious institutions in residential zones but imposed a minimum lot size requirement of 5 acres. The law didn’t make the same requirement of nonreligious institutions.
After the Georgia Brazilian Assembly sued, Marietta changed the law. It eliminated the 5-acre minimum and replaced it with an ordinance that prohibits all religious institutions in a number of residential zoning districts, including the R-2 classification.
It’s under that 2004 rewritten law that the city has denied Covenant a building permit and, so far, has not processed its special use permit. City officials said Friday state law prevents them from processing a permit if it's in litigation.
In September the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court ruling that the church has "no vested right" to a permit to build under the city's zoning ordinance.
The court did agree with the church that the city violated the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Person’s Act in treating its application differently from other nonreligious organizations, and awarded the church $1 in damages.
The church is still deciding whether it will file an appeal, which is why the city says the litigation is still pending.
The long battle has been costly. In 2008 the church filed for Chapter 11 reorganization because of thousands in legal fees and a $42,000-a-month mortgage payment on land it can't build on.
"The city is quite aware of financial damages caused and are simply delaying long enough in hopes that we lose the property and [are] at an even greater disadvantage," Anderson said.
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