Airport buys church land; flock to move

After 134 years, the congregation of Pleasant Grove Baptist Church will be moving to a new home less than a mile away.

The Charlottesville-Albemarle Airport has acquired the church and its property, which is located in an airport safety zone, said Barbara Hutchinson, the airport’s executive director. The church has been given two acres about a mile from the Earlysville church, where pastor Shirley Chapman said a new church will be built.

After more than a decade of negotiations and waiting, Chapman said the deal finally went through on June 30. The congregation can remain in the building for 12 months from the closing date.

“It’s really kind of painful,” Chapman said. “We are going.”

The Federal Aviation Administration deemed the Earlysville church, which was built in 1875, an obstruction after the agency revised the required size of the runway protection zone and runway safety area in the 1990s. Hutchinson said the historically black community church is in the extended area on the south end of the runway.

Hutchinson said the FAA didn’t deem the church a critical safety issue for landing planes, but the church still has to be removed from the property in order to comply with the regulations.

“There’s a liability for the airport for anyone or any property that’s damaged because it’s in the airspace,” Hutchinson said.

The old oak tree at Route 643 and Earlysville Road has not been deemed an obstruction.

Chapman said the congregation will build a new church on the two-acre site on Earlysville Road between Avionics Specialties Inc. and the Walnut Hills subdivision.

The church previously negotiated a deal with the airport authority for the two acres and $460,000, which will not cover the entire cost of the new building. The sale was most recently delayed after Avionics Specialties notified the state Department of Environmental Quality in December 2007 that it found a low level of chemical degreasers in its groundwater while doing testing before it sold the building. One well in Walnut Hills was found to be tainted, and the issue was remedied with a filter.

The church is allowed to move the building or use parts of it in its new construction. Hutchinson said the airport must remove whatever is left. Chapman said the congregation hasn’t decided if its new home will have parts of its current building.

“Our plan is to take whatever’s left and build a memorial for the church to recognize what was there,” Hutchinson said. “We’ll work with them to determine what that would be.”

The church has had plans drawn up for its new building, which will include a fellowship hall and a choir room, two things that don’t exist in the current facility. Chapman said the congregation now is working with the county on the process of building the new church.

Hutchinson said the airport is looking at appropriate uses for the church if the congregation chooses not to take it or use its materials. She said an artist has put in a request to dismantle the church and rebuild it elsewhere as a studio.

The church still has ties to its past. The Hawkins family built the church, Chapman said, and a member of the fourth generation of that family still drives from Richmond to attend Sunday services.

Although the church certainly is old, the state’s Department of Historic Resources declared in 1990 that it wasn’t a historic site. The department said some of the original materials in the church’s construction, such as siding, have been replaced over the years.