A project to benefit First United Methodist Church could earn members a return on their investment.

When given the chance to purchase a piece of the congregation’s property that will eventually serve as home for a second campus on the west side of Lawrence, approximately 135 members of the 1,600-member First United Methodist Church, 946 Vt., responded.

The church’s membership — faced with the challenge of having more land than it needed for its proposed, multiphase development project — conceived an innovative solution. Members decided to form a limited liability company that would allow them to share ownership of 20 of the property’s total 67 acres. Then, someday when the land has appreciated, the 20-acre parcel could be sold to a business or real estate developer — hopefully earning LLC members a nice profit.

Meanwhile, the money raised by selling units of ownership to LLC members can be used to retire First United Methodist Church’s debt from the original purchase of the 67 acres in October 2001.

“The people who came up with this idea were very creative,” said the Rev. David Livingston, the church’s associate pastor. “I’d say the response to it has been phenomenal. It showed that the church is passionate about what we’re planning for west Lawrence, that there’s a good sense of cooperation and spirit here.”

Members have formed the entity Gateway West Land Holding Co. to share ownership of the 20 acres of surplus land, part of the property located at the southwest corner of the intersection of U.S. Highway 40 and Kansas Highway 10.

The LLC is legally and financially independent of the church. The LLC’s membership, however, is mostly made up of those who belong to First United Methodist Church, as well as a handful of people who belong to other United Methodist churches in the Kansas East Conference.

The deadline to purchase units of the LLC was June 1. The real estate transaction that closed the deal took place Wednesday.

Each unit of the LLC cost $250, according to David Lord, president of the LLC’s nine-member board of managers. Individuals could buy as many units as they wanted, and they now have a vote in the activity of the company in accordance with how many units they own.

The LLC offering had to raise a minimum of $800,000 and a maximum of $1.2 million.

“We were somewhere in between that,” Lord said. “We had to file our prospectus with the Kansas Securities Commission and have it approved before we started selling any units.”

The number of units individually bought by LLC members varied.

“I think the most that anybody purchased was 140 units. Most of them purchased somewhere around $10,000 (of units),” Lord said.

The goals of forming the LLC were twofold, according to Lord: to help First United Methodist Church retire some of its property debt on the campus; and to serve as a good investment for those who bought into the LLC ownership.

The sale of the 20 acres will be subject to the approval of the LLC’s membership.

It could be five or 10 years before the LLC’s land has measurably appreciated and the right buyer or developer is located, Lord said.

The first meeting of the LLC is July 19. Its members will elect a new board of managers at that time.

First United Methodist Church acquired the 67-acre property from the Catholic Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas for $1.7 million in 2001.

The church plans to begin construction of a multipurpose facility on the property in the summer of 2005, with occupancy ready in the fall of 2006, Livingston said.