Church can be built, not expanded

An Eastside mega-church that has become the centerpiece in the fight over proposed size limits for schools and places of worship in rural King County can still be built, but cannot grow as large as church leaders want - at least for now, a judge has ruled.

The ruling was met mostly with favorable comments from both church representatives and rural advocates fighting what they say is city-scale development sloshing over the urban-growth boundary that was designed to contain it.

King County Superior Court Judge Sharon Armstrong could have slashed the size of TimberLake Christian Fellowship's 48,500-square-foot church under construction east of Redmond, or even allowed the church to increase to its targeted size of 80,000 square feet. Armstrong upheld a county hearing examiner's decision that permitted the current construction - but no more - to go forward.

"Today's decision was actually pretty good, I think, in terms of limiting the size of TimberLake," said Amanda McCloskey of the Livable Communities Coalition, a group affiliated with the anti-sprawl group 1000 Friends of Washington.

Bill Bump, the church's interim senior pastor, was also pleased.

"It's not like it's something that interferes with our plans, because (expansion) was always something that was down the road anyway," Bump said.

Armstrong agreed with the hearing examiner's conclusion that TimberLake should not receive permission to expand because all of the impacts could not be foreseen. But Bump said he was relieved that the judge struck down the hearing examiner's ruling that the church must wait four years before it could apply again.

The case was lifted to Superior Court after both TimberLake and the Citizens for Responsible Rural Area Development, a group of neighbors, appealed the hearing examiner's findings of last year.

Two years ago, the specter of more TimberLakes and huge high schools appearing in rural lands pushed King County Executive Ron Sims to propose that new church and school complexes outside the urban-growth boundary be limited to 20,000 square feet - about the size of a dairy barn. Groups including the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Seattle complained, saying limits violate constitutional guarantees of religious freedom.

A fragile compromise now before the Metropolitan King County Council would allow buildings as large as 40,000 square feet but force them to go up, not just out, limiting the size of their "footprints." A vote is expected on June 4. If passed, the ordinance could block future growth such as TimberLake's proposed expansion.

"It's nice to have (the decision) behind us," said Councilman Larry Phillips, D-Seattle.

"It sort of affirmed this idea that we've had, that `as big as you want' is not appropriate in rural areas."

Chris Solomon can be reached at 206-515-5646 or csolomon@seattletimes.com.