UPDATE BRYAN PLACE VS. THE BAPTISTS

When we last left the Bryan Place homeowners, they were feuding with the First Baptist Church over a daytime homeless facility that the church was planning on Ross Avenue next door to Bryan Place (“Soul of a New City,” November). Homeowners and church leaders were struggling to find a compromise, with the homeowners maintaining that the church could find a more suitable site-preferably one more than ten feet away from their houses.

Well, this fall, the church found the Dallas Life Foundation building on Cadiz Street south of downtown. The Dallas Life Foundation, a homeless center, was being operated at a huge loss by the Jupiter Road Baptist Church, which had lost its main benefactor, Danny Faulkner of 1-30 condo scandal fame.

By Christmastime, it looked as if there would be a happy ending. The First Baptist Church was planning to take the Dallas Life Foundation off the hands of the Jupiter Road Baptist Church, which would in turn solve the problem of homeless types lolling near Bryan Place at all hours of the night. But according to sources close to the negotiations, the deal fell through at the last minute because of a squabble between the Baptist churches over the purchase price.

In the meantime, Bryan Place homeowners, fearing that First Baptist would reconsider the original site for the homeless next door to Bryan Place, protested the church’s permit to renovate the building on that site. Both sides, it seemed, were gearing up to go at it again. But all hope for a compromise is not lost. In mid-December both the homeowners and the First Baptist Church asked the city’s Board of Adjustments, which handles such building permit protests, to delay making a decision on the protest pending more negotiations.. .