Thou shalt build places to worship
For the state's leading denomination, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, new buildings are a natural outgrowth of being one of the world's fastest-growing religions.
"The church builds when they need to," said Rob Howell, a spokesman for the LDS Church. "Meetinghouses are constructed to accommodate the membership needs of the church."
Building God's Way, an Ogden-based firm that designs Christian churches and schools, combines economic and religious principles in its business model.
Founded 10 years ago by local architect Daniel Cook, Building God's Way seeks to provide cost-effective designs for various Christian churches and schools around the country, chief executive Steve Hartman said.
The company designed, and through its 20-plus contractor partners across the nation, built 27 churches and parochial schools in the United States last year.
It has designed about 400 buildings to date, and currently has about 200 projects in various stages of the design process, Hartman said.
Detailed, comparative figures on religion-related real estate are not readily available, but anecdotal evidence suggests the sector is at least somewhat insulated from the economic ups and downs that affect residential building and other forms of commercial real estate.
"It's just such a small segment of the overall market that I don't think anyone is really keeping track," said Robert Lindsey, northern Utah manager for the commercial real estate firm Commerce CRG. "But I would think it's not really based on the economy."
For example, Arizona currently has one of the worst overall real estate markets in the nation, but the LDS Church recently announced plans to build two new temples there.
LDS churches are built based on recommendations from local leaders, primarily stake presidents, who monitor attendance and congregation size and make recommendations to church headquarters accordingly, Howell said.
The church completes construction on an average of about 1.5 new chapels every day worldwide, he said.
The LDS Church had 13.2 million members at the end of 2007, and has added about 1 million members since 2004, he said.
Unlike other forms of real estate, churches don't count on selling or leasing space in their new buildings, so the state of the market isn't as much of a factor in their building decisions, Hartman said.
But while the market for churches hasn't seen the same decline as the housing market, it still faces some of the challenges with which others in the construction business are dealing.
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I cannot afford to even pay my tithing, much less increase any donations...
I can't, I am broke. | May 10, 2008 at 7:07 a.m.
