Fred Chang’s Newsclips

By Elizabeth Williams
May 21 2003

A downtown Port Orchard church is about to get a new lease on life as a wedding chapel/catering business.
The old First Apostolic Lighthouse Church on Cline Avenue has been many things over the years — a pioneer church in Poulsbo, a Montessori school and a tux rental shop. Since February, the building has served as the Storybook Wedding Chapel, a non-denominational wedding site. However, because the church’s land is technically zoned residential, all businesses have had to obtain and regularly update temporary-use permits to operate there.

To avoid the hassle of having to constantly go back to the city for permission, the current owner’s representative, Curtis Boozer, opted to ask the city to rezone the entire property commercial.

For the most part, city officials had no problem with his request. “We have a structure that, although it looks like a church, no longer has those capabilities,” said city planner Rob Wenman.

The Cline church is situated on a narrow piece of triangular land. Parking is extremely limited so, according to city code, the number of people allowed in the building is equally limited. Including proposed parking lot improvements, city staff estimate the church property can only support approximately 15 cars. That means maximum church occupancy will be set at 45 — three people per equivalent parking space. A valet parking plan, which has not yet been approved, would potentially allow 22 spaces and raise the maximum church occupancy to 66.

Most congregations would not be able to function if only 45, or even 66, people were allowed on the premises at one time — churches are typically funded by member donations and therefore need more than 40 or 50 members to flourish. Boozer said a few smaller congregations — ones too small to have their own facility — do rent the building on occasion. However, he believes the best use of the church will be as a wedding site and general gathering space. “My concern, and the owner’s concern, was to get it occupied by the best possible user,” Boozer said.

There was some discussion about how Boozer intends to go about starting a catering business in the church’s small basement kitchen. Because most catering businesses require hot food preparation, Boozer could run into issues with the fire department over worker safety, ventilation and fire suppression. Boozer said the current plan is to provide cold food like veggie platters and sandwiches, and then later look at the practicality of installing professional food service equipment.

The Port Orchard Planning Commission, when it reviewed the plan, wanted more information before making a final decision. Some of the commission members were upset Boozer did not finish reviewing the plan with them before taking it before the city council. However, because the planning commission has no authority to make an applicant come back with more information, the dissenting members’ opinions were largely ignored.

“This is the first rezone application to proceed to the city council without a recommendation from the planning commission,” said planning commissioner Fred Chang, who said he was surprised to see the rezone on the city council’s May 12 agenda.

The Port Orchard CIty Council unanimously approved the rezone request at its May 12 regular meeting. No one spoke against the project.

© Copyright 2005 Port Orchard Independent