The Vision
Every time a church is mentioned in the Bible, it is addressed by the name of a city. We believe that when God sees Freedom Church, He sees entire communities and neighborhoods that could be reached with the Gospel. Whether through Christ-centered church services, discipleship training, Laundry Love, or Kids Hope, our vision is to see God’s Kingdom come in the San Fernando Valley as it is in heaven.
Thank you for taking the time to consider this proposal. With your help we can acquire a perfectly positioned property at an affordable price and build a Freedom Center that will impact our city with the Gospel for generations to come.
What God is Doing
In 2011, a young couple planted a faith community in Chatsworth with a simple vision: to ‘love Jesus, serve people, and adopt the city.’ What started as a Bible study with just seven friends quickly grew into a church committed to serving the city by focusing on their under-resourced neighbors. Initially, serving others meant providing free laundry services each month to families in need and offering a weekly meal to neighbors experiencing homelessness. Over the last 14 years, however, this vision has grown into a church and community center experiencing an incredible move of God through salvations, baptisms, and community impact.
• Weekly drive-through food pantry that has served over 200,000 bags of groceries.
• Weekly meals and mobile showers for our neighbors experiencing homelessness.
• Weekly addiction recovery programs that have helped over 300 individuals find sobriety.
• Monthly free laundry service providing over 200,000 loads of clean clothes for families in need.
The last 12 months has been an incredible move of God and 63% growth:
• 2,568 first-time decisions for Christ
• 433 baptized in water
• 87,039 bags of free groceries through drive-through pantry
As exciting as this growth is, it has been heartbreaking to turn families away weekly because our services are at capacity. We are currently reorganizing to offer a 5th weekend service, but the services will have to be shortened in length to accommodate our lack of space.
The Challenge
Freedom Church is currently renting a facility that can no longer accommodate our growing needs. A recent 75% increase in rent has added significant challenges, limiting our ability to expand our staff. Despite these obstacles, our most pressing need remains finding more physical space to serve our congregation and provide essential services to the community.
This new facility for the Freedom Center will address the following critical needs:
• Location: Chatsworth location (maintains our strong community partnerships)
• Size: 94,000 SF (nearly 4 times our current building with plenty of room for community outreach)
• Parking: 1,400 parking spaces (this includes a parking structure directly across the street with 800 stalls)
• Price: Cost per foot $237 SF (this includes expenses for church renovation and seismic retrofit)
We’ve conducted a thorough, multi-year search, exploring every option to find a property that meets all of our complex requirements. The challenge lies in finding a facility that is both affordable and suitable for long-term community impact. Industrial properties are in high demand, typically selling for $400 per square foot, and rarely offer sufficient parking for hundreds of people at once. While there is a significant inventory of office space in the Valley, these spaces often lack essential structural features, such as the ceiling heights needed for worship services or the space required for our drive-through food pantry. This facility offers more than adequate square footage for sustained growth and impact.
The Opportunity
This new building will nearly 4x our square footage and allow us to:
• Double our gathering space for worship services and children’s programing.
• Increase our warehouse space 10x for our drive-through food pantry.
• Expand our addiction recovery services and weekly mobile shower program for the homeless
• Establish a permanent place in the community while reducing monthly facility costs with a mortgage that is less expensive than our current rent.
Project Details
With your support, we are ready to enter a long-term escrow for a prime property with excellent parking and all our essential requirements. Our plan is to purchase the property and use the upstairs for offices, recovery meetings, and counseling. We will also lease part of the upstairs to like-minded organizations to support long-term sustainability. The current tenant downstairs will vacate in March 2027. Afterward, we’ll begin a nine-month renovation to create a 15,000 square-foot auditorium by opening up the second-story floor, adding space for a preschool/kids ministry, offices, and more. This will provide us with 75,000 square feet of flexible, community- focused space. Our goal is to have the property ready by December 2027, enabling the Freedom Center to grow and offer services that are currently limited by our existing facility.
BUDGET
Project Budget
The total project cost is $19.4 million. The purchase price of the building is $14,500,000 ($161/SF). We are required to do a bit of seismic retrofitting to keep up with current codes, will spend a little over $2M for renovations, and have built in carrying costs and financial reserves into the total cost. Even with losing 15,000 SF of total floorspace with the auditorium buildout, the total all-in cost of the project will come out to $237/SF, far below any other property we have viewed. It makes good financial sense to proceed with this strategic property.
Funding The Project
A diverse funding stack of partnerships is the key to raising the necessary funds for this miracle. It will consist of several key components:
• $2.5M investment from The Foursquare Church
• $2.4M investment from seed funds/outside partnerships
• $5.5M professionally-managed capital campaign from Freedom Church (24 months)
• A bank loan of $9M approximately 46% of the total project
FOR YOUR PRAYERFUL CONSIDERATION
The current property owner is under pressure to renew the lease with his tenants, but he has offered us the opportunity to purchase the property now and secure it as the new Freedom Center in 2027. This timeline would allow our church the time to raise the necessary funds, obtain permits, renovate the building, and complete our current lease. Would you prayerfully consider committing this miracle project? We believe your commitment to Freedom Church and the Kingdom of God will inspire our congregation to give with unprecedented sacrificial faith. Your partnership will create a powerful momentum, unleashing faith and strengthening our congregation’s dedication to the church of Jesus!
Justice and Maria Coleman
CONTACT
For more information, don’t hesitate to get in touch with Larry Boatright (larry@adoptthecity.com, 719.421.0870) or Matt Landesman (matt@investorpropertyloan.com, 818.625.4383)
