‘We look forward to all the possibilities’

FARMINGTON — The Christian Science First Church, located at 33825 Grand River Ave., is adjacent to the Governor Warner Mansion and is a property that has piqued the interest of Farmington City Manager David Murphy for a “long time.”

The Warner Mansion and its gardens have been owned and maintained by the city of Farmington since 1980.

It is the historic home of Michigan’s 26th governor, Fred M. Warner. Despite its historical value for the city, according to a press release, it is currently limited in its on-site programming and operations.

The thought of Farmington taking ownership of the property where the church is located intrigued Murphy, as it would allow for expanded use and additional parking at the Warner Mansion.

One day, Murphy decided to pay a visit to the church, and he let it be known that, “if you should ever decide to sell … the city certainly would be interested. Would you please call us first?”

Murphy recalled that he paid that visit to the church during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Last winter, he got a response.

“Right before Christmas, I was quite surprised and happy one day, when someone called and said they were thinking about selling, and would we be interested,” Murphy said.

Indeed Murphy was, but some steps were required before moving forward, including having the property appraised and negotiating a price.

Eventually, after going through some steps in the process, at a special meeting Aug. 15, Farmington City Council members voted unanimously to authorize Murphy and a city attorney to complete the purchase of the Christian Science First Church, which has been at its current location since 1956.

The purchase price was $395,000.

It is Farmington’s intention to “bond out” to purchase the property, Murphy said.

“It would basically be cash,” he said. “Once the bonds are sold, we would have our cash, and then we would just pay the church with the cash. … The purchase agreement ends on Dec. 31, so we should have a closing before that.”

Murphy discussed the advantages of owning the property.

“This way, we’ll have parking for events at the mansion,” he said. “It should help us put on more events at the mansion. … Hopefully, it’ll help us generate some revenue, which will help us maintain the Governor Warner Mansion.”

From the perspective of Farmington Mayor Sara Bowman, purchasing the property represents a “huge” opportunity for the city.

“The community and City Council have prioritized the Warner Mansion as something that we really want to invest in, and to do that, we’ve conducted a lot of community engagement, as well as retaining our civil engineers to help us identify what people would like to see done there, what it’s use could be, and one of the opportunities presented was to gain ownership and ability to have the property next door,” Bowman said. “By getting control of that property, it really helps us as we move forward with expanding the use of the Warner Mansion.”

The purchase of the property could potentially help solve a couple of problems for Farmington.

“One of the issues we have with programming at the Warner Mansion is parking,” Bowman said. “There’s also an issue with the fact that it was a church — none of the events held at the Warner Mansion could include a liquor license. So if somebody wanted to have, say, a wedding reception … and serve beer and wine, we weren’t able to do that because of our proximity to that church property. … This opens up a much larger breadth of events that we can hold at the Warner Mansion.”

According to Murphy, Farmington has leased parking space at the church property previously.

Aside from the benefit of owning the parking spaces, he said, “It opens the door to a multitude (of) things.”

When asked about specific plans for the property, Murphy said, “I don’t want to get into specifics at this point. The first thing was to purchase the property so the city controlled it.”

Murphy said that being adjacent to the Warner Mansion is the only reason Farmington is interested in purchasing the Christian Science First Church.

“I think it’s very important that the city control that piece of property,” he said. “We look forward to all the possibilities. … I think you’ll find that it’ll enhance the Warner Mansion considerably, and the events we can put on there — look forward to seeing it all come to fruition very soon.”

The church’s willingness to sell the property to Farmington helped create all of the possibilities that could be in store for the city.

“I’m very happy that they saw fit to give us first chance at it,” Murphy said. “They like this city very much, so they were very willing to work with us, and they were very easy to work with, as well.”