Higher Calling

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Despite all seeming logic to the contrary, business has never been better for Steve Lazarian.

That’s counterintuitive for two reasons: First, he’s in the sluggish construction industry, and second, his speciality is churches, which are supposed to get only better with age.

Yet business at Lazarian’s CityWorks Management LLC in Pasadena has been growing by about 20 percent a year to where it is now overseeing a half-billion dollars in church or religious-related construction projects.

“We’ve never been busier,” said Lazarian, 61. “We start five new projects a year, and next year it could be 10.”

The phenomenon is not completely without explanation. For starters, there are only a handful of competitors in the field, and the company also handles peripheral projects such as church offices, parking lots and religious schools.

Among other factors driving the growth, however, is a significant trend: despite the long decline in mainline church attendance, nondenominational and evangelical Christian churches are growing like wildfire. Moreover, many of them are simple concrete block-and-stucco affairs without the bells and spires traditionally associated with houses of worship.

“People say they want to think outside the box, but we say, ‘No, you want to go back into the box,'” said Lazarian. “Churches today are driven by multimedia, and that works better in enclosed buildings without windows. We don’t have stained glass and all the traditional churchy stuff; we want to create the environment inside a box.”

In fact, some new churches, rather than being constructed from the ground up, are located in existing structures such as movie theaters, department stores and strip mall shops that have been converted into sanctuaries also jobs that CityWorks handles.

All in all, Kurt Fredrickson, director of the Doctor of Ministry program at Pasadena’s Fuller Theological Seminary, estimates that some 11,000 churches will be constructed nationwide over the next decade.

“Lots of them are being started by entrepreneurial pastors looking for new places to worship,” Fredrickson said. “Brand loyalties to major denominations have gone away.”


Finding niche

The company founded in 1983 by his father who was an electrical contractor involved in nondenominational ministries originally handled the construction itself. Among its earliest projects were such traditional buildings as West Angeles Church of God in Christ in Los Angeles, Church on the Way in Van Nuys and Lake Avenue Congregational Church in Pasadena.

Such projects still comprise a big part of the business. However, much of the company’s work comes from smaller projects such as site development and a new sanctuary for the Baseline Community Church in Claremont valued at $1 million. Another project getting under way is with the Morningstar Christian Chapel, a 3,500-member Whittier church that wants to convert an empty warehouse into a worship hall.

“We’re doing three services on Sunday and have a big overflow room where people watch it on video,” said Pastor Jack Abeelen. “We can’t really go to four services.”

So the church is looking at buying an 80,000-square-foot warehouse with nine acres of parking in nearby La Habra.

“It’s easily convertible and less expensive than building from the ground up,” Abeleen said. “We do lots with overhead projectors, so it really fits what we do.”

Lazarian said such projects reflect the ready availability of industrial land as rising vacancy rates leave warehouse landlords looking for nontraditional buyers. The sites also have the added advantage of being in areas where there are few residents to complain about heavy traffic on Sundays.

Lazarian a committed Christian and lawyer by trade took the reins of the business in 1993 and changed its focus to project management, which gets CityWorks involved early in projects.

In many cases, the firm helps locate and acquire a site. Then the company’s lawyers, architects and construction professionals work with pastors and congregations to design a church and navigate the oftentimes thorny process of entitlement. Finally, subcontractors are hired to do construction.

“Churches are very inexperienced at building, and often need someone to help,” Lazarian said.

Since 1992, CityWorks has completed 30 projects including 25 churches ranging in cost from about $400,000 for a small religion-oriented multipurpose room to $150 million for a 174-unit Christian nursing home in Santa Ana. The fee is generally 1 percent to 3 percent of a project’s total cost, which pencils out to about $65 to $300 per hour of staff time billed on a monthly basis.

A current project that reflects CityWorks’ wide expertise is the planning, design and construction of a six-level, 550-space parking structure for the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, a 3,000-seat facility in Echo Park founded in 1923 by Aimee Semple McPherson.

“(Lazarian) was a key part of the effort,” said Dave Wood, minister in charge of facilities, who stressed that without CityWorks the $15 million project likely would not have gotten off the ground. “This is a specialized thing. People in the church are normally not knowledgeable about construction projects; there needs to be somebody to sort out what’s there.”


Broadening horizons

One recent CityWorks project that has had a major impact on the company is the new Cottonwood Christian Center in the Orange County city of Cypress. A $65 million undertaking, the construction was initially opposed by the city, which preferred that commercial retail be developed at the site.

Several years and a few lawsuits later, however, the new church including a 4,700-seat auditorium surrounded by offices on 18 acres has been built. The job created lots of publicity, about $380,000 in fees and several new referrals for CityWorks.

One of those was for the Neighborhood Church of Redding, which wants to construct a new sanctuary in that Northern California town. The project is in its early planning stages.

“It’s the first time we’ve left Southern California,” said Lazarian, who now envisions expanding his firm nationwide. “Our goal is to replicate what we’ve done here in other parts of the country.”


CityWorks Management LLC

HEADQUARTERS: Pasadena

FOUNDED: 1983

CORE BUSINESS: Overseeing and managing the building of churches and church-related construction projects

EMPLOYEES: 10

GOAL: Growing the business by 25 percent in the next year

THE NUMBERS: Profitable, with $3 million to $5 million in annual gross revenue

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