Once among biggest U.S. churches, empty Akron Baptist Temple now home to looters, squatters

With five young children cramming him out of the bed he shares with his wife, Matt Pryor usually sleeps on the couch listening to what he thought was the eerie squeaking of a toy car rolling down the street at night.

Stirred awake this week, he rushed to the window to snap a photograph of two men pulling a trash can on a cart. Pryor didn't sleep any easier knowing it wasn't a ghost haunting his Kenmore neighborhood in southwest Akron. He's collected similar photos over the summer, usually of scrappers and homeless people who've overtaken an abandoned, 363,000-square-foot church a block away on Manchester Road.

A megachurch once boasting 4,000 weekly worshippers and the "world's largest Sunday school," Akron Baptist Temple is now a poster child of neglect. The building has been on the market since a year after it was purchased in 2018 by The Word Church.

What will happen to the Akron Baptist Temple site?

The Realtor said a buyer is looking to purchase and demolish the iconic church then redevelop the 29 acres, possibly for mixed retail and residential use.

The potential buyer is unknown. Redevelopment would require rezoning the residential lot. And the owner, who county authorities say has not applied for tax exemption, would have to settle nearly $400,000 in back taxes, which could be waived with the application.

A standard 120-day due diligence period would follow the sale, during which the buyer could check for asbestos that could run up the cost of demolition and any subterranean concerns, like the type of fill used to raise the backyard where high grass has covered a baseball field.

Still, demolition could happen fast if a deal closes, as the real estate agent hopes, in the first quarter of 2022. Until then, the building slips deeper into disrepair each day.

Why has the Akron Baptist Temple site has been in a state of decline?

Windows are smashed on multiple floors. Weeds are overtaking the parking lot. Plywood boards cover back entrances that have been pried open by squatters and looters. The inside "looks like a tornado came through," the real estate agent said.

In October alone, police were called to the church 31 times, arresting 11 people, sometimes at gunpoint. On a single day, five people were charged with breaking and entering, trespassing or theft, including a man who hid beneath a pickup truck backed up to a rear entrance and loaded with scrap, and a woman who attempted to evade police capture by rushing into the church and crawling on top of air ducts.

A majority were released on the scene and told not to return as the county jail won't take suspects charged with most misdemeanors and some nonviolent felonies during the pandemic.

"We are currently accepting Felony 1s, Felony 2s, violent Felony 3s, domestic violence, weapons under disability, and improper handling of a firearm," said Bill Holland with the Summit County Sheriff's Office, which oversees the county jail. "We are also honoring all of our misdemeanor jail bed contracts. This has been the case during the pandemic, as we have been forced to reduce our capacity."

A sign the size of a Publishers Clearing House check still leans against the front door of the church: "Akron Baptist Temple is now the official home of The Word Church Akron." But papers taped to entrances send Sunday worshippers to the Chapel Hill location on Brittain Road, which appears to be subleased to another church.

And homeless people have made the church their home.

On a chilly morning this week, a man bundled in winter clothing pushed his mountain bike and pull-behind cart out the back of Akron Baptist Temple. He disappeared along an access road out back, heading in the direction of a scrapyard that told the Beacon Journal that it has only one customer who rides a bike, because his car broke down, and that man doesn't pull a cart.

Akron says the Akron Baptist Temple site has been ‘on our radar’

Pryor, the concerned neighbor, said he used to work maintenance and write newsletters for the Haven of Rest Ministries, the largest homeless shelter in Summit County. He gets that there's no easy solution to balancing public health and community safety with the needs of individuals who are desperately trying to stay warm and fed.

But since July when he attended the first ward meeting in Kenmore, he's called the police, who've told him to call the church. He's called the church, who told him to call City Hall. He's called the mayor, who has thousands of privately owned vacant and abandoned properties to watch.

"I know it's a complicated situation, but it seems no one knows where the responsibility lies," said Pryor, who lives a block from the church with his children and wife.

Mayor Dan Horrigan's office said Ward 9 Councilman Mike Freeman first informed city administrators in late September about neighborhood concerns regarding the church.

"It is on our radar," said Ellen Lander Nischt, Horrigan's press secretary.

Commercial property inspectors told the property manager to secure the church last month. Windows and doors have been boarded and re-boarded.

Enforcement, including fines and demolition orders, are on hold, Nischt said, while the city holds out for the preferable solution of a buyer redeveloping the property.

"If that falls through," Nischt said, "the next step would be to issue orders and send it to the Vacant Building Registry board to be demolished."

Looting has taken place at the former Akron Baptist Temple site

Ed Matzules, the Realtor who's been trying to sell the church for more than two years, said there's little to deter the looting as scrappers take everything from copper pipes to catalytic converters knowing they're probably stolen. Accepting stolen scrap is a long-standing issue and not an easy one to fix, said Lt. Mike Miller with the Akron Police Department.

Items like pianos that are too heavy to carry off are being sold by the church's owner.

Inside the front door is a cluttered mess of overturned shelves, pieces of insulation and trash. Empty fast-food cups and containers circle the building. Three pumpkins recently appeared out front, including one with a red palm print.

Thinking that media attention could encourage enforcement, Matzules agreed to let the Beacon Journal tour the inside of the church this week, but a pastor called off the visit and did not return a phone call seeking further comment.

End of an era for Akron Baptist Temple

"Something has to be done," Councilman Freeman said.

Freeman grew up near the church, where he was an assistant pastor from 1979 to 1985.

His in-laws where involved in the day-to-day operation of Akron Baptist Temple. They would be sad to learn it could be demolished, he said.

But enough is enough, said Freeman, who's driven his car by constituents' houses to check on reports of increased criminal activity, like the leaf blower that was stolen out of a car in Pryor's driveway a couple weeks ago.

Demolition of the church would remove the standing memory of a legacy institution and mark the end of the expansion of The Word Church in Akron.

Local history: Akron Baptist Temple founder inspires new book

Founded in 1934 with 13 members meeting on Sundays in a school, Akron Baptist Temple grew to embrace radio then television, outliving the austerity of wartime and criticism for its fundamentalist doctrine.

The church became a footnote in most research on the origin of megachurches. But attendance started to slip in the early 1960s, all the way to 2007 when the Rev. Ed Holland, who later moved to Connect Church on Killian, took the pulpit.

Holland sold the church to the Rev. R.A. Vernon, senior pastor of The Word Church, for $1.5 million in 2018. Vernon told the Beacon Journal he wanted to surprise his congregation with the gift of a new church.

Holland and Vernon shared the church, for 10 months after the sale. But members of The Word Church were not willing to leave the Chapel Hill location, which opened in 2013, for the new campus in Kenmore. And overall attendance suffered.

By 2019, citing a struggle to keep up with the ballooning lease payments for the Brittain Road location, Vernon put the old Akron Baptist Temple up for sale for $3.9 million.

Reach Doug Livingston at dlivingston@thebeaconjournal.com or 330-996-3792.

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Akron Baptist Temple could get demolished in redevelopment