When the leaders of the Durango Vineyard Church entered into a contract to buy the former Basin Printing building, located in the 1400 block of East Second Avenue, they thought the approval process would be straightforward.

The organization had been searching for a permanent home for some time. The centrally located 13,000-square-foot building, which cost nearly $2 million at the time, was perfect. The church’s concept had long been to make the space available for other uses when the congregation was not meeting.

In order to meet the city’s parking requirements, the church negotiated an agreement with a nearby property owner to lease the mandated 23 off-street parking spots, which would be shared by other businesses. The church’s parking needs would not conflict with the needs of those businesses, its representative told the city’s planning commission.

The agreement was included in the church’s Jan. 6 application for a limited use permit. Sale of the building was contingent upon approval of the permit, which was necessary in order to establish a place of assembly in a building sited in the Central Business Zone District.

“We were told by the planner that pretty much we were greenlighted,” said DJ Jergensen, the church’s founder and lead pastor. “... And then that changed dramatically through the process.”

Sometime in late January, a bright yellow flyer appeared around the neighborhood.

“VINEYARD CHURCH WILL BRING THE HOMELESS TO THE BASIN PRINTING BUILDING,” one line read in oversized font.

The flyer summarized a conversation that its author, East Second Avenue resident Lorena Norton, had with Jergensen, as well as links to three articles in The Durango Herald concerning controversy over funding for a warming shelter operated by Community Compassion Outreach. The CCO shelter operates out of the same church building currently rented by Durango Vineyard, but the two are independent tenants of the building.

On Feb. 8, the church’s representative received a letter from Planner Savannah Lytle informing the applicant that the staff had denied the permit application.

The basis of the denial was twofold. Staff found that the assembly use was incompatible with the surrounding “largely single-family residential” land uses on the block. Planners also concluded that the remote parking plan outlined in the application was not reasonably accessible, nor could the 23 spaces in question be “double-counted to meet parking requirements.”

Durango Vineyard appealed the decision to the city’s planning commission. On April 3, the commission met and once again denied the application, affirming the staff’s initial decision.

The series of events once again highlighted just how prickly the question of how, and if, as some residents wonder, the city can facilitate providing services to houseless people.

The idea that the Basin building might be used to serve Durango’s houseless population was far from a reality, Jergensen said, although the church does conduct outreach and dedicated volunteer time to the cause.

“We just never had any intention of creating a homeless facility,” he said. “It wasn't going to be primarily a homeless shelter or even a warming center.”

The proposal submitted to the city made no mention of anything resembling a warming shelter, nor did a frequently asked questions document posted on the church’s website on Jan. 15.

Rather, early speculation on the part of Jergensen and other church leaders indicates that the organization hoped to make the space available to a variety of public-facing nonprofits. At one point there was discussion of a day care, Jergensen said, but the idea was later scrapped.

Despite the insinuations made on Norton’s flyer, Jergensen said Durango Vineyard had no intention of partnering with Community Compassion Outreach to move the warming shelter.

Norton and an assemblage of concerned neighbors and business owners met with Jergensen and other church leaders shortly after the flyer circulated.

But the meeting did not assuage her concerns.

“We did not leave there with warm fuzzies,” Norton said. “We left there with, like (the feeling that) ‘they're withholding information and this feels gross.’”

Norton said the meeting called her and her neighbors to action. The city received 19 public comments on the proposal. Seven of those comments objected to the permit, arguing against the facility’s use as a service center for houseless people; eight comments objected to it on the basis of both inadequate parking and those services; and three comments objected on the basis of parking deficiencies alone.

Only one letter supported the permit application.

The comments contained the same impassioned objections that surfaced when Community Compassion Outreach requested funding for its warming shelter.

“I would like it to be known that I am violently opposed to this idea of having a refuge for the homeless next door to my house,” wrote neighbor Carrie Grant.

Melissa Gibbs, another neighbor of the building, chimed in with an oft-repeated point.

“I need to say if you guys ruin our corner of town and reduce our property values it will be disgraceful!” she wrote.

To be sure, the church had discussed using the space to serve the community, although no specific plans for that use had been developed.

But it was the parking concerns that ultimately led to the denial, said Community Development Director Scott Shine.

“There can be like a lot of speculation and there can be a lot of different narratives about what this is or what the impacts are going to be,” Shine said. “But our job, as the local government, is to apply the standards and evaluate (what) doesn't meet those standards. And that's ultimately what our decision was based on.”

When the planning commission considered Durango Vineyard’s appeal on April 3, there was little to no mention of anything but parochial use of the building.

Rather, Lytle made the case that the shared parking solution would not suffice because the existing building, Northpoint Mall located at 1315 Main Ave., was legally out of conformance with city code. The building has 47 parking spaces, but its size technically requires it to have 90 spaces.

Planning commissioners found that, in addition to the parking concerns, staff had appropriately applied their discretion to the project in deciding that a church would be incompatible with the surrounding land uses.

Jergensen said there is “no question” that the vehement objections of neighbors, which stemmed from a misunderstanding over use of the space, played into the decision.

“We probably should have been a little bit more aggressive in terms of the press on what we were really trying to do versus that which we were not,” he said. “I got a lot to learn.”

The Basin building is now back up for sale with an asking price of $2.1 million.

rschafir@durangoherald.com