Lawyer of Church Says Village Was 'Horsing the Church Around'

Lawyers representing Liberty Temple Full Gospel Church, the church that sued the village in federal court in March, say village officials are still making the church’s move to a Bolingbrook shopping center harder than it has to be.

The two sides were scheduled to appear in court last week, but that status hearing was delayed because the village “had come up with a new way of horsing the church around,” said Andy Norman, a lawyer with Mauck & Baker, LLC, the firm that represents the church.

Norman said the church was waiting on a building permit, essentially the last piece of the puzzle to end the litigation, which stemmed from a  by Liberty Temple that alleged Bolingbrook officials discriminated against church officials' efforts to relocate to a long-vacant space inside the Bolingbrook Commons shopping center.

Essentially, the suit focused on one’s interpretation of the village’s zoning map, which was ambiguous in its zoning definitions.

U.S. Judge Harry Leinenweber said on April 12 it was  and ruled against the village in a zoning dispute against Liberty Temple Full Gospel Church. A few days later, Leinenweber ordered the village to issue a building permit in a timely manner.

Instead, Norman said, the village withheld the permit for several weeks because of their concern over the amount of parking in the shopping center’s parking lot.

That argument has since been dropped, Norman said, and the two sides are once again scheduled to appear back in court at the end of this week.

The building permit now appears to hinge on the church registering all of its contractors, which Norman said nearly all are.

Norman said he hopes Friday’s hearing is the beginning of the end of the matter.

“It’s been pretty obvious that ever since (Leinenweber ruled against the village), there have been road blocks in our way,” Norman said.