Chapels for hire

New Urban News Article with images, 12/1/2007

Landmark buildings can more than pay for themselves through weddings and other functions.

Many Traditional Neighborhood Developments (TNDs) would like to have a beautiful chapel or meeting house as the focal point of their main drive. But what if no religious or civic organization is ready to build it? At The Waters, southeast of Montgomery, Alabama, developers Ed Welch and Dale Walker went ahead and built the Chapel Hill Meeting House as a community-oriented but privately owned structure.

The Meeting House cost $600,000 to construct, says Nathan Norris, marketing director of the 1,250-acre development. Its symmetrical, columned façade, culminating in a bell tower and steeple, is placed so that it terminates the view from one of the development’s principal streets, Chapel Hill Street.

The Waters, which will eventually have approximately 2,500 housing units in eight neighborhoods, already had numerous community amenities, including a boat house, fire pit, outdoor kitchen, playground, pool, beach, and tennis courts, not to mention a town square with corner market, bank, dentist and YMCA. “We would have had to wait a period of time if we wanted to deed the Meeting House to the homeowners association, the Waters Assembly,” Norris says. “Thus, we were happy to get it built now and have a private entity own it and rent it out.”