wfn.org | UCC / Church sets April 26 hotel groundbreaking

[powellb@ucc.org]

March 26, 1997
Office of Communication
United Church of Christ
Laurie Bartels, press contact
(216) 736-2213
E-mail:  bartelsl@ucc.org
On the World Wide Web:  http://www.ucc.org

Church agency sets April 26 hotel groundbreaking,
announces financing change

CLEVELAND -- A national agency of the United Church of
Christ has scheduled groundbreaking for April 26 and
changed its financing strategy for the hotel it will
build in downtown Cleveland, now to include an eighth
floor and the purchase of a five-story building next
door.
      Expanded plans for the hotel near Jacobs Field
and Gund Arena were approved by the City of Cleveland
Design Review Committee on March 6 and Planning
Commission on March 7.  The United Church Board for
Homeland Ministries, the agency that is sponsoring the
building of the hotel, hopes for a grand opening in
the spring of 1998.
      Original plans, approved by the city last fall,
were for a 93-room hotel, costing an estimated $6.5
million.  With the hotel design changes and the
annexation of the 633 Huron Rd. building next door to
the site -- currently a parking lot behind the UCC's
national offices -- the hotel will have 141 rooms.
      To develop the project, the United Church Board
for Homeland Ministries, a nonprofit organization, is
establishing a limited liability company which will
borrow up to $11 million from Cleveland-based KeyBank.
      This replaces the board's original financing
strategy, which was to take a portion of its invested
funds -- accrued through gifts and bequests since the
19th century, and currently invested in stocks an
bonds -- and invest them in the construction of the
hotel.
      "When we found we could borrow money
commercially at about 6.25 percent, and keep our
invested funds in stocks and bonds, where they earn
about 14 percent, the choice was clear," said the Rev.
Robert P. ("Rip") Noble, a UCBHM general secretary and
coordinator of the hotel project.  The Homeland Board
will use its invested funds to secure the loan.
      Noble emphasized that under the new financing
plan, as under the previous one, no offering-plate
dollars will be used either to build the hotel or buy
the next-door building.  Monies sent by local churches
-- via regional bodies, called "conferences" -- for
the national and international work of the UCC are
used to fund ongoing ministries carried out by the
national agencies of the church.
      National agencies of the church rent an
estimated 5,000 room-nights per year at hotels in
Greater Cleveland to accommodate church members
attending national meetings.  Below-market room rates
that those agencies will receive at the new hotel
could save the church as much as $130,000 a year, the
Homeland Board estimates.
      The new hotel also will be open to the public,
with regular room rates estimated at $80 per night and
larger suites available in the annexed building for
$120 per night, Noble says.
      The 1.5-million-member United Church of Christ,
with more than 6,100 local churches in the United
States and Puerto Rico, is a 1957 union of the
Evangelical and Reformed Church and the Congregational
Christian Churches.  Its national offices have been in
Cleveland since 1990.
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