Friday, April 30, 2010

Cathedrals Can Take That Long Too

The St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague took almost 600 years to complete. The First Bapist Church of Guilford may be the HoCo equivalent of the St. Vitus job. For what I believe to be over five years now the expansion project of this church at the corner of Guilford Road and Oakland Mills Road in Columbia has gone through a continuous series of fits and starts. Right now it’s in a fit again.

Yesterday as I drove by I saw three gentlemen speaking across a newly erected chain link fence surrounding the site.

“What’s up with the building?” I inquired.

“That’s what we’d like to know,” one of the guys inside the fence told me.

According to this fence trio the general contractor had declared bankruptcy. They were hopeful that a new contractor would take over the job next week.

This is actually a sad story. The longtime pastor who started this project, the Reverend Dr. John L. Wright, passed away in January. He never got to see his church completed.

4 comments:

Alan said...

Well, that explains why the site has been idle for so long. I was wondering if the congregation ran out of money again.

Anonymous said...

If you were truly Christian, couldn't you just meet in a field somewhere?

This looks like a great place to get the money lenders involved.

custom matchbooks said...

Great place. Thank you for this.

Alan said...

Wow. 2011 is ending and the church still is not completed. I turned up information on http://freestatesheepgate.blogspot.com that discusses some of the lawsuits that have surrounded this property, from liens from the contractors, to personal lawsuits.

Although Harbor View ceased work because they doubted that they would be paid, it seems that the courts disagreed. http://www.andersonkill.com/news_article.asp?newsid=1196