WHEATFIELD — A proposed church that was to have been the centerpiece of a once-controversial development project apparently will never be built.

The Rev. Jerry McGlone, pastor of Church at Shawnee Landing, said last week that the project off Shawnee Road is being dropped, and his congregation is looking elsewhere.

“We have something planned, but we’re not ready to make any public announcements,” McGlone told The Buffalo News. “We hope to remain in North Tonawanda.”

His congregation was formerly known as Payne Avenue Christian Church, but it sold its North Tonawanda building when the move to Wheatfield was planned four years ago.

Church moderator Vic Baker said that although the church’s official name now is Church at Shawnee Landing, it has been holding services in a Masonic lodge on Ruie Road in North Tonawanda.

Baker said the last straw was a Nov. 4 Wheatfield Planning Board meeting, at which the church presented a scaled-down version of its construction plan, reduced for financial reasons.

The Planning Board ruled the congregation would have to go through the site plan review process from the beginning, something church members viewed as overly onerous.

“We made a recent decision that we could no longer afford to build in Wheatfield because of the stringent restrictions the Planning Board put on us,” Baker said.

With investor Paul Granville and Belmont Shelter Corp. as partners, the church constructed 64 units of affordable housing on its 19-acre site. Opened in 2007, the housing is rented in full, Baker said.

At the time, neighbors complained that the project would endanger their safety and property values.

“These are for the working poor. This is not subsidized housing,” Baker said. “In spite of all the uproar from the neighbors who thought we were bringing a slum to their backyard, it’s considered one of the finest communities of its type.”

Baker said the revised proposal was to delete a day care center that was supposed to have been connected to the new church, which would have cut the cost of a $2 million project roughly in half.

Town Engineer Timothy Walck said he thought the day care center was to have been a future phase of construction. Planning Board minutes indicate the redesign was another reason for the board to consider that a new site plan was needed.

“We’re very sad,” McGlone said.

Planning Board Chairman Richard Muscatello said, “The Planning Board only enforces what’s already in writing. We don’t make up rules.”

Walck, of Amherst’s Wendel Duchscherer firm, said he didn’t think it would have been “a long, drawn-out process.”

Walck said there were issues regarding drainage and green space, especially since there was a request from Heritage Christian Services of East Rochester to buy some land from the church on the other side of Captain’s Way.

He also said the Monroe County organization wants to erect a 3,600-square-foot group home for disabled people, a request still pending before the Planning Board.

Other issues on the church project itself included retention basins for runoff, sidewalks, parking and the phases of construction, Walck said.

Baker said the church already had spent more than $500,000 constructing a road, water lines and lighting, all of which now belong to the town.

“We haven’t had the best experience with some of the Wheatfield politicians,” said McGlone.

Asked to name names, the pastor replied, “The town attorney has always been helpful to us, as have been the building inspector, the Building Inspection Department and the town engineer.”

Conspicuously missing from that list of helpful people were the town’s elected officials.

“It wasn’t our intention to drive anybody out,” said Muscatello, who is appointed by the Town Board.

Former Supervisor Timothy

E. Demler, whose term expired Thursday, said he heard second- hand “that they were waiting until I was out of office to move forward with an alternative plan, whatever that is.”

News Niagara Reporter Denise Jewell Gee contributed to this report.