wfn.org | Hotel bears signs of UCC's history

["Barb Powell"<powellb@ucc.org>]

United Church of Christ
In Cleveland, contact:
Andy Lang, (216) 736-2215
Laurie Bartels, (216) 736-2213
On the World Wide Web: http://www.ucc.org

For immediate release
April 29, 1998

Hotel bears signs of church's history;
future 'campus' phases envisioned

     CLEVELAND -- More than 200 members and ministers of the
United Church of Christ assembled on Huron Road in downtown
Cleveland April 24 to dedicate the Radisson Hotel at Gateway, which is
expected to open to the public in early June.
     Built by the United Church Board for Homeland Ministries
behind the UCC's national offices, the project includes a 142-room hotel
and a UCC Meeting House.  Artwork in the facilities will include works
from national galleries relating to the religious denomination's history
and ministries.  This is first stage of an ambitious project to create a
larger "Church House" for the 1.5-million-member United Church of
Christ. 
     The dedication, including prayer and singing, involved the 225
corporate members of the United Church Board for Homeland
Ministries, who were holding their annual meeting, as well as
Cleveland-based officers and staff of the church. 
     "When we gathered here last year, this space was a level parking
lot," said the Rev. Dr. Thomas E. Dipko, the Homeland Board's
executive vice president, at the dedication.  "What you see now is a
vision come to life in brick and mortar."  
     The UCC-influenced environment of the hotel includes:
     * The Amistad Room off the hotel lobby.  It includes a fireplace
and is designed as an alternative to bars as a comfortable space for
guests to relax and visit.  Guest rooms supplied with the New Revised
Standard Version of the Bible, copyrighted by the National Council of
Churches, an ecumenical body to which the UCC belongs.  
     * Artwork that reflects the history of the UCC and its religious
predecessors in U.S. history. Prints and reproductions of historic
paintings show subjects ranging from the 17th-century Pilgrims the
spiritual ancestors of the Congregational Christian Churches, one of the
UCC's antecedent denominations to Jackie Robinson, who broke Major
League Baseball's color barrier in the 20th century and who belonged to
a UCC church in Connecticut.
     Among others depicted are the Boston radicals who planned the
revolutionary Tea Party; German General von Steuben training
American soldiers at Valley Forge; Cinque, the leader of the Amistad
captives; European-American settlers of Connecticut's "Western
Reserve" in what is now Northeast Ohio; Antoinette Brown, the first
woman ordained to the Christian ministry; and 19th-century Native
Hawaiian Queen Liliuokalani.
     The hotel already will be connected to the UCC offices at 700
Prospect Avenue and will share a terrace and courtyard with them. Also
located between the hotel and the UCC office building is large UCC
meeting room.  But it is also part of a "larger vision," Dipko said. In
coming years, the UCC hopes to give its national offices the character of
a "Church House," with state-of-the-art facilities for meetings and
seminars and a dedicated worship space.
     "It is a vision that is true to our heritage from Israel and the New
Testament that the church must be a church of hospitality," Dipko said.
     Church consultant Lyle Schaller, in comments he wrote for the
Homeland Board in 1996, suggested such a "Church House" campus
could become a center for programs that would be "a national training
resource for both congregational leaders and individuals" in the 21st
century.
     "This will require relevant and high-quality learning
experiences," Schaller said. "This includes the enlistment of teams of
congregational leaders for specialized training. This will require
meaningful learning experiences for individuals in group settings.
     "The primary reasons for this restoration effort are to enrich the
personal spiritual pilgrimage of individual Christians and to strengthen
the ministries of congregations as they seek to transmit the faith to new
generations."  A facility for nationwide conferences and workshops with
space for lodging, common worship and shared meals would create an
environment of hospitality and creativity, Schaller said.
     The emphasis on mission and ministry applies to the financing
and operating of the hotel as well.
     "The church is not, nor does it want to be, in the hotel business,"
said the Rev. Robert P. Noble Jr., Dipko's executive associate and
coordinator of the hotel project, in a report to the Homeland Board's
corporate members.  To protect its nonprofit status, the Homeland Board
formed a for-profit, limited-liability corporation to build and own the
hotel, and this corporation has contracted with a Cleveland-area
management company, Marathon Inc., to operate the hotel.  Two
national officers of the UCC --  the Rev. Dr. Paul H. Sherry, president,
and Edith Guffey, secretary -- are on the Board of Directors of the
limited-liability corporation, as is Dipko. 
     There has been one change in the method of financing the $12
million hotel project since it was announced in July 1996.
     Originally, the Homeland Board had planned to take funds from
its endowments, which are currently invested in stocks and bonds, and
invest them in the hotel project.  But in 1997, borrowing became an
attractive alternative and the Board's directors and its Investment
Committee voted to secure a loan from KeyBank for the hotel project. 
Endowment funds, now being used to secure the loan, are continuing to
be invested to provide income for the Homeland Board's mission and
program.
     In any case, offering-plate dollars from local churches that
support regional, national and global ministries of the UCC are not being
used for the hotel.  "From the beginning, there has never been any
consideration of using funds contributed from local churches to 'Our
Church's Wider Mission' for building or operating the hotel," Noble said.
     In fact, the hotel is expected to help UCC mission agencies
spend less on national meetings by charging them reduced rates.  Such
meetings use approximately 4,500 room-nights per year in Greater
Cleveland, and the ministers and laypeople who come to them currently
must be housed in other hotels, where group rates often are currently in
the range of $95 per night.
     The United Church of Christ, with more than 6,100 local
churches in the United States and Puerto Rico.  It was formed by the
1957 union of the Congregational Christian Churches and the
Evangelical and Reformed Church.

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