More than a year after Romar Beach Baptist Church put its property on the market, a developer has bought the beachfront facility for $6.5 million.
The hotel proposed for that spot would be a 76-room Marriott brand hotel, according to the Orange Beach Planning Commission.
Pastor Chris Fowler wrote on the church’s Facebook page on Sept. 26 that most of the money would go to pay the church’s longstanding debt.
“For years there was an ‘element’ of RBBC who wanted the ‘illusion’ of being a wealthy ($$$) church. It was never more than a money ‘pit’ and existing literally at the mercy of the bank from month to month,” wrote Fowler, addressing a news headline saying the church building had sold for “big bucks.”
‘Blessed richly’ by visitors
“It has NEVER been a ‘rich’ church (in money!) but has been blessed richly by all of you who have worshiped with us or stayed in the retreat center,” he wrote. “Yes, it was a very difficult time keeping 28 AC units working and using equipment purchased at auctions after most of their use was already gone.”
The church lost its original building to Hurricane Ivan in 2004 and dedicated its current building in 2008. It sustained major water damage when Hurricane Sally hit in September 2020.
When the church started rebuilding after Hurricane Ivan, the congregation of around 50 local members picked up an “unfathomable” mortgage, Fowler said in 2020. The post-hurricane structure is a five-story worship and conference center that is anchored to bedrock to withstand a category 5 storm.
Over time, the church “broke even,” he said, but then they faced accusations of some uncleared debt.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Romar Beach Baptist Church saw somewhere between 10,000 and 12,000 guests — mostly vacationers — come through its doors for worship services each year. They typically saw between 200 and 300 professions of faith a year. On typical years, they also hosted between 4,000 and 5,000 in the two floors of their building built as a retreat center space. When COVID-19 drastically affected that number, it cut out a primary source of the church’s income, Fowler said.
That led the church to list the property in summer 2020 to cover its debt, he explained.
Avoiding foreclosure
“When the facility ‘sold’ our bank account didn’t even increase [enough] to purchase a condo in most of the buildings in our area,” Fowler wrote on Facebook Sept. 26. “We fulfilled our financial debts (which we inherited) with nowhere nearly clearing enough money to purchase ‘debt free’ almost anything in this area. We didn’t even receive enough to purchase land to ‘hopefully’ sometime in the next generation to build on.”
But God blessed them to provide a way out of debt through the sale of the building, he wrote. “At any point these wonderful people COULD have declared bankruptcy and walked away. Christians don’t do that. It was a debt created in RBBC’s name, and we did the only ‘right’ thing we could do as we were forced into either selling at far below the market value or be ‘on the street’ because of a foreclosure.”
But God stepped in again and provided a window of opportunity to stay at the beach this past year, Fowler wrote. They have a chance to relocate now, but will still have to borrow money to purchase a facility.
Even so, “we believe our ‘wilderness’ is almost over and it’s going to be incredible,” he wrote.
Fowler said the church must move out of the facilities and into a new home by Oct. 20. Currently the Oct. 3 and Oct. 10 services are still planned for the beachfront property, according to his Facebook post.
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