Litigation Their Plans For Large Expansions Inspire Friction With Neighbors

Four houses of worship in Central Jersey are meeting opposition over their expansion plans. Here are their profiles:  Alliance Bible Church at 52 Mount Horeb Road in Warren was founded in Plainfield in the 1920s and relocated to Warren in the early 1980s. It is affiliated with the Christian and Missionary Alliance, a denomination that dates back more than a century and which currently has nearly 2,000 churches in the United States. The denomination places a strong emphasis on missionary activity. The church has grown from 92 to nearly 500 regular worshippers over the last six years under the leadership of the Rev. Brent K. Haggerty. Alliance Bible wants to build a 30,000-square-foot Family Life Center that would include an auditorium-gymnasium on its approximately 15-acre site, said Building Committee Chairman Vince Staiger. When the Family Life Center is completed, the church would build a 5,000-square-foot welcome center and a 7,500-square-foot, 519-seat sanctuary. Plans also call for 175 new parking spaces. The cost of the improvements would be $7 million to $8 million. The existing 7,500-square-foot church building, a 25-year-old geodesic dome, would be torn down. The plans already have been approved by the sewer authority and the Warren Board of Health and are expected to be submitted to the township Board of Adjustment for a setback variance by the end of this month, Staiger said. Church of the Hills, at 3545 Route 206 in Bedminster, is an Assemblies of God affiliate that began in 1990 as a home Bible study group in Bedminster with 10 people and has grown under the leadership of Pastor Ron Marinari to more than 550 regular congregants. After several years of holding services at various sites, including the Olde Mill Inn in Bernards, the Bedminster Reformed Church and Raritan Valley Community College, the congregation moved to its present location at a renovated Equestrian Training Center.

The church wants to build a 48,000-square-foot addition onto the existing 18,500-square-foot building on its 25-acre site. The proposed expansion would include a gymnasium, classrooms, offices and a 600-seat sanctuary. The proposal also includes 450 additional parking spaces. The cost of the total project is about $5 million. The church's application for a use variance was turned down in May by the Bedminster Board of Adjustment and the church filed a federal lawsuit against the township July 1 in U.S. District Court in Newark. Millington Baptist Church at 520 King George Road in the Basking Ridge section of Bernards was formed by members of Mount Bethel Baptist Church seeking to start a sister church across the Passaic River in 1851. The meeting house formally opened in 1855 and a new church building opened in 1974.In order to accommodate its growth -- the church has grown from 600 members 10 years ago to almost 1,000 today, senior pastor Peter Pendell said -- the church is seeking to build a 67,390-square-foot complex with up to 1,200 seats, 21 Sunday school classrooms and 403 parking places on an 86-acre site on Mine Brook Road in the Liberty Corner section.

The project received preliminary approval in August 1999, with objectors trying and failing to overturn the approval in court. The final site plan approval for the seven-year-old proposal was denied by the Planning Board on Wednesday because the preliminary site plan approval had expired. Sri Venkateswara Temple just off Route 202-206 in Bridgewater is a Hindu place of worship that started in an unused church in 1992 and has grown from about 450 members to more than 1,100 members since the temple building, a 28,300-square-foot replica of a 600-year-old Dravidian, or South Indian, temple was built in 1998. Sri Venkateswara is one of the largest Hindu temples in the country. In order to accommodate its expanding membership, the temple leaders want to increase the 9,800-square-foot cultural center to 22,000 square feet, add 9,000 square feet to the temple and build priests' homes totaling 12,400-square-feet. The number of parking spaces would nearly double, to 475. The 73,545-square-foot project was scaled down from 91,000 square feet to accommodate neighbors' concerns about traffic and safety. An application for a floor-area-ratio variance was presented to the Board of Adjustment by the Hindu Temple and Cultural Society of USA last March and was turned down in January after 10 months of hearings. In April, temple trustees sued the zoning board in Superior Court in Somerville. Action is pending