Cypress’ OK Expected on Land Deal With Church

The Cypress City Council is expected on Monday to end its nationally watched tug-of-war with a church over a prime piece of land, approving a deal to give Cottonwood Christian Center a new home and bring a revenue-generating Costco to town.

As part of a three-way agreement, the city would purchase 18 acres of church land it has coveted as the centerpiece of its 300-acre redevelopment zone. City and church officials declined to discuss details, saying the cost would be disclosed Monday.

The church, in turn, would pay about $17 million to a private landowner for a 28-acre section of the nearby Cypress Golf Course.

If approved, the compromise plan would end more than two years of rancor between the city and church. The city contended that Cottonwood bought the land even though it was in a redevelopment zone intended for revenue-generating uses. Church officials maintained that they were never warned about the city’s plans.

The fight ignited a national debate that weighed a city’s development rights against a church’s free exercise of religion. It also generated a citizens referendum and a federal injunction to keep Cypress from seizing Cottonwood’s land.

“We’re happy to move on and get closer to our goal of having our own [new] church,” said the Rev. Mike Wilson, a Cottonwood pastor.

“We weren’t looking for this whole situation.”

The conflict began after the 4,500-member church, which had outgrown its 2.4-acre facilities in neighboring Los Alamitos, snatched up six adjacent properties in Cypress’ redevelopment zone for $13 million in 1999.

In October 2000, city officials rejected the church’s plans for the site, indicating they preferred commercial development there. Last May, the City Council unanimously voted to condemn the church’s land to make way for a Costco.

But a federal judge in August issued a temporary halt to the city’s plan, writing in a 36-page opinion that Cypress appeared to be “trying to keep Cottonwood out of the city, or at least from the use of its own land.”

It took a court test to move the city toward compromise, said Patrick Korten, a spokesman for the Beckett Fund for Religious Liberty, a Washington-based group that concentrates on religious freedom and worked as legal counsel for Cottonwood.

Korten said the lesson that cities should learn from this is “it’s better to work with churches on solutions before you get dragged into court.”

Ed Allred, who owns the golf course and the adjacent Los Alamitos Race Course, said the church will initially buy 18 acres and lease an additional 10 acres, a move that will close the golf course once Cottonwood breaks ground.

He added that he’ll eventually donate the leased land to the church and allow Cottonwood to use the golf course’s $5-million clubhouse.

Church officials say they’ll take advantage of the additional acreage to redraw their plans, which had included a 4,700-seat sanctuary, a preschool, bookstore, coffee shop, meeting facilities and youth center.

“We want to make it more of a campus,” Wilson said.

Allred said another advantage of the deal is that it will solve a potentially sticky political dilemma facing the city: how to close a popular public golf course in order to make way for redevelopment.

“It worked out for everybody,” Allred said.