This historic Bellingham church building is for sale
A longtime Bellingham church building known to be a place of refuge will soon be listed for sale.
With 97% of the congregation who participated in the voted approving, the Garden Street United Methodist Church has decided to list its building for sale on Monday, Oct. 4. The tall red brick building at Garden and East Magnolia streets has been a part of Bellingham for more than 100 years. A sales price had not been finalized Friday, Oct. 1.
The church concluded after a three-year study that it wanted to be more nimble, said Pastor Kathy Hartgraves.
“We are not dying — far from that,” Hartgraves said in a news release. “Rather than pouring more and more of our resources, tithes and offerings into building maintenance, we are boldly stepping out in faith.”
The congregation hasn’t had indoor services since the COVID-19 pandemic began, opting for online meetings. The congregation plans to take that step back to in-service worship on Sunday, Nov. 7, meeting at the Four Points by Sheraton hotel on Lakeway Drive.
“Worshiping online during the pandemic has helped us all to realize more fully than ever before that the church is not a building. We believe that God is seeking to do a new thing in and through us,” said Amory Peck, a Garden Street Methodist Church member.
The church building has a little over 39,000 square feet of space and sits on about an acre of property. A small piece of property that is nearby is also for sale and has a Craftsman home built in 1922.
With the two properties in a residential transition zone of the York Neighborhood, buyers could have a variety of options including residential, office, mixed-use, restaurant, and other commercial uses, said Michael Reams, a broker and commercial specialist at Windermere Real Estate/Whatcom Inc.
A history of service
According to church officials and The Bellingham Herald archives, Methodists began moving to the Bellingham area in the 1870s, with the construction of the current Garden Street building beginning in 1910 and being completed in 1912.
Over the decades the church building has been offered to the community in a variety of ways, including sheltering flood victims, housing a nearby congregation when their church was destroyed by fire as well as being a shelter to refugees in World War I.
In recent years it has been used as a cold-weather emergency shelter as well as helping people escape homelessness. It has also housed a preschool, then a Montessori School and hosted WWU Lifelong Learning classes. It has also been home to a variety of recovery group meetings.
“The church’s motivation for it all has been to seek to be Christ-like in helping people to more fully love and serve God, people and the world. This mission will not change,” said Hartgraves.
This story was originally published October 4, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
