Bakes sales and festivals helped fund new church building on Tates Creek Road
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A rendering of the new Panagia Pantovasilissa Greek Orthodox Church on Tates Creek Road.
Patience is a virtue, they say. If so, then the members of Panagia Pantovasilissa Greek Orthodox Church on Tates Creek Road must be most virtuous. Members have been talking about expanding their church for much of the last 20 years.
“Our church has been in the same location for 65 years and our space is too small for weddings and baptisms and other sacraments of the church,” said Dennis Karounos, vice president of the parish council. “We’ve had to rent other churches for larger ceremonies. We don’t have handicap accessibility either and we have no on-site parking for older folks and families with children. So we’ve had several needs that needed to be answered.”
The dilemma: should they remodel their current one-third acre church property at 920 Tates Creek Rd. for their 77 active church families, or look elsewhere for more room?
Surveys of members over the years came back with mixed reviews. Some parishioners said stay, others said move. The decision may have been made easier after the church went to the city Board of Adjustment three times with plans for expansion of the original site. It was turned down each time.
Church leaders looked at more than 20 sites around the Bluegrass. For its new church campus, it chose a site at 3005 Tates Creek Rd., at the corner of Rebecca Road, just 1.4 miles down the road. The church purchased a home that existed there in 2010 and tore it down. Ground was broken this summer and construction is underway. Earlier this summer, the church sold its former property for $500,000.
“I have read the notes of the founders of the church community (from the late 1940s) and they had the same struggles we have, like getting approval from the city and being able to afford the land and constructing the building,” said Karounos, who practices internal medicine and endocrinology at the VA Medical Center.
“We now move up to 1.3 acres at the new site,” Karounos said. “The design of the new church is Byzantine, which is a plus. It’s going to be all on one level. The square footage increases by 7,000 feet, an increase of two-and-a-half times,” he added.
The new site will also provide space for 53 parking spaces. The new Panagia Pantovasilissa Greek Orthodox Church hopes to be open by Valentine’s Day 2014.
All in all, did the decision turn out for the best? Another church official thinks so. “Absolutely. If we could have done an expansion at our current location it would have been nice, but we still would have had the same issues, like parking. By moving, it’s going to work out,” said Tina Thompson, president of the church board and a local registered dietician in private practice.
Thompson is also pleased for elderly parishioners, some of whom struggled up and down church stairways for years or had to walk to the church from distance parking spots scattered around the neighborhood.
“We really have to show our parishioners we can do it this time and that we have everything in place with no more snags,” Thompson said. “The challenge in the future may be to getting everyone on board.”
The cost of the project is about $3 million. Of that amount, the church has already raised $2.3 million. The church has been holding bake sales since 1965 and Greek festivals since 1986. Many Lexington residents might only know of the church from the radio ads that air each summer promoting the events. Proceeds from the events have been patiently deposited in the church’s building fund for decades.
“We have estimated we have sold over 100,000 pieces of baklava (a Greek dessert) over the years,” laughed Karounos.
Church leaders will phase the project in by completing the outer shell of the entire property, opening space for the church and social hall and rest rooms. It will still need to raise an additional $700,000 to finish the entire church plus add classrooms. “We will have to continue with our fundraisers,” Karounos said. “We have good community support.”
Panagia Pantovasilissa is the only Greek Orthodox Church in Lexington. It is led by Fr. George Wilson. The parish is part of a huge geographic diocese based in metro Detroit. There are two Eastern Orthodox Churches in this area, but they are not affiliated with the Greek Orthodox Church. One is in Lexington, the other is in Nicholasville.
“We are proud to say ours is ‘the original church,’” Karounos said. “We are very careful to maintain the traditions of the Greek Orthodox religion as a Christian religion. In our new church, we wanted to maintain the Byzantine architecture that has been passed down to us through the centuries."