New location is at corner of South Third St. and Gibson Rd.
First Baptist Church in Mebane got a unanimous endorsement from Mebane’s planning board Monday night for its plans to build on a 22.57 acre lot at the corner of South Third Street and Gibson Road (listed as 940 Gibson Road).
The first phase of the project is for a 21,955 square foot daycare center, a planned new ministry of the church, which now operates an after-school program at its current location at 301 South Third Street.
Stan Wheatley, who presented the church’s plans, said the church had concluded that day care was a need in the Mebane community with the influx of young families; the daycare facility is geared to accommodating 150 to 300 children, he said.
Sitting out the discussion and vote was Kurt Pearson, the planning board’s vice chairman, who asked to be recused inasmuch as he is a member at First Baptist.
The church bought the property ten years ago for $682,500; its tax value is listed as $805,241.
The church is seeking to rezone its 22.57-acre corner lot from light manufacturing to office and institutional (conditional district) for construction of a 21,955 square foot daycare center, as well as for a future church location.
The lot, which is now just a vacant field, is in the city’s extraterritorial jurisdiction (ETJ). Annexation would be required before future connection to city utilities, according to city officials.
Plans submitted to the city do not include any layout or timeframe for the future church construction, but Wheatley showed architectural renderings of the proposed 3-phase layout: with daycare as the first phase, hopefully breaking ground later this year, he said; a 25,000 to 30,000 square foot educational, or Sunday School, building; and a sanctuary that could seat between 500 to 800 people. The church’s “current facility is getting too small,” Wheatley told the planning board. The back of the buildings will face South Third Street.
Wheatley estimated that the Sunday School and sanctuary would be built within the next three to five years.
The one difference in the renderings shown versus current plans is that the location of the daycare center and sanctuary are reversed; all three buildings will face out to a parking lot that will be entered by Gibson Road.
The day care, with a fenced play area, will be next to Gibson Road, with the sanctuary ultimately being adjacent to the Governor’s Green subdivision. Hours for the daycare would be about 7:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., it was noted.
A second distinction that emerged is that the renderings show a heavily forested background, while, in fact, the lot is an open field.
[Story continues below renderings of facilities.]
According to a description of the plans, the church will construct a 5-foot wide sidewalk along both South Third Street and Gibson Road, initially in front of the daycare portion and then “extended with future development of the site” along all of both sides of the property’s frontage on both South Third Street and Gibson Road.
The church is asking that the remainder of the rezoning (for the future sanctuary and education building) be approved without any specification of the remaining layout of the future church building itself, except that “future development will comply with City of Mebane standards and requirements.”
The church’s current building would be sold after the church moves into its new facilities, Wheatley explained.
The planning board ultimately recommended the rezoning 8-0, with Pearson recused. Voting in favor were chairman Judy Taylor, Colin Cannell, William Chapman, Keith Hoover, Gale Pettiford, David Scott, Susan Semonite, and Edward Tulauskas.
The city council will conduct a public hearing and consider the rezoning at its April 7 meeting.
