Office building undergoes a conversion

Talk about a leap of faith.

When parishioners of Harvest Bible Chapel were looking for a permanent home for their congregation, church leaders found what they believed to be a suitable property.

However, there were several hurdles accompanying their selection. The building wasn't ever intended to be a church, the parcel wasn't zoned for church use and it wasn't exactly for sale at the time.

"If the facilities team had walked in with me when they found this site, I would have said 'No way,'" admitted Executive Pastor Mike Clancy. "This was an attractive location, but the building was not attractive."

A long-vacant four-story office building going through foreclosure proceedings, tucked behind an aging hotel alongside a busy interstate in Naperville, was the choice.

What Clancy couldn't see immediately, others did.

They showed him how the east wing of the first floor with its multi-cubicle office space would be the perfect worship center. They explained how the third floor maze of administrative offices could be gutted and opened into a sprawling children's area. And they pointed out that the building had room for the congregation to grow.

"We had decided that we wanted something along the I-88 (Reagan Memorial Tollway) corridor somewhere between Route 59 and Route 53," said Senior Pastor Ron Zappia. "To that point, I had walked through every vacant building, which is about 30 locations, when we came across this place."

So it was bought and financed by the congregation's donation of $6.5 million. Over the course of just 30 days, it had commitments for $4.5 million, Zappia said.

"Some people chose not to take vacations as extravagant as originally planned," he said. "One guy sold his Corvette and gave us the money."

And if that wasn't miraculous enough, church leaders persuaded the city council to allow them to take a commercial property off the tax rolls and rezone the land.

"They initially told us they'd love for us to be in Naperville, just not in this building," Clancy said. "But the real key for us was the idea of creative re-use."

The office use had failed, but the church promised prosperity and people.

Because the new church will be used throughout the week by scores of people, there's a built-in customer base for the Freedom Commons retail and restaurant development currently under construction directly to the west. That was another key selling point for the council.

Now, the congregation is on the cusp of seeing its dreams and hard work realized. Inaugural services will be held at 9 and 11 a.m. Oct. 7 at the church's new home at 1805 High Point Drive in Naperville.

The building is alive with activity, as if it's making up for lost time. From 2003 until May of this year, the structure sat vacant. Now construction workers are buzzing around the inside and outside of the building readying it for the grand opening.

Clancy said everything other than the outer shell and elevator shaft had to be gutted to make the conversion from office to church.

After seven years of renting space at Glenbard South High School near Glen Ellyn for Sunday services -- which required getting there early to unpack everything and staying for hours afterward to pack everything back up -- some church leaders joke they are most looking forward to the reduction of manual labor.

Many of the church's 1,200 parishioners have been showing up in droves every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, creating a volunteer work force that has expedited some of the labor, Zappia said.

"These people were giving before we knew if we would be allowed to use the building," Clancy said. "There's the real step of faith."