As churches and religious organizations grow in the Wilmington area, so do their needs for real estate.

Examples abound throughout the Cape Fear region. Before Port City Community Church, which counts 5,000 members across four campuses, had its own Wilmington property at 250 Vision Drive, the church met at Roland-Grise Middle School and the Regal Mayfaire Stadium 16 movie theater.

The church was blessed more than a decade ago, executive Pastor Richie Marshall said, to find 32 acres in the center of Wilmington where it could build a 90,000-squarefoot facility after other potential purchases fell through.

Its Leland congregation meets at Belville Elementary School now, but the church was gifted property in Leland at the end of 2016, and church officials are doing the due diligence necessary to find out what it would take to develop the site for a permanent campus, Marshall said.

In Southport, Generations Church recently bought a facility at 4019 Executive Parkway SE adjacent to St. James Plantation for more than $1.6 million. The nearly 25,000-square-foot building was previously occupied by Tri-Tech Forensics. The purchase came with 6 acres.

Generations Church had been renting space for about 12 years, said Steve Warwick, a commercial real estate broker and partner with Maus, Warwick, Matthews & Co. who represented the church in the transaction.

Don Harley of Coldwell Banker Commercial SunCoast represented the seller, DownEast Industries Inc.

Life Community Church is raising money to build a church after leasing more than 20,000 square feet in the Sears wing of Independence Mall at 3500 Oleander Drive.

The church bought the property at 3802 Carolina Beach Road in June last year for $687,000 from Cameron Company LLC, according to New Hanover County property tax records.

The church submitted plans to the city of Wilmington for a 30,000-square-foot facility.

As fundraising continues for the new building, church officials hope to break ground in mid- to late-2018, and the church would need to move in some time in 2019, said Pastor Tim Blevins.

“For a church to have its own property and grounds gives it a ton of credibility. It gives it visibility; it gives us flexibility,” Blevins said. “It just helps us so much for doing other events and things that are important to us, things that are outside. We don’t have any outdoor space here [at Independence Mall].

“It just opens up a lot of doors for us,” he said.

Like Port City Community Church, Life Community Church saw finding property to purchase for the church’s facility needs in a county where developable land is becoming more scarce as a good sign.

“As you know, in our city, there’s not a lot of property. So if you find property, you’re really happy,” Blevins said. “So we’re real excited about it. We love the location. We’re sandwiched right between The Pointe theater [the Stone Theatres movie theater at The Pointe at Barclay] and RiverLights [a community under development on River Road], and my estimate is that it’s probably one of the fastest-growing segments of our town.”

Plus, it’s only about 3 miles away from Independence Mall where church members are used to getting together and where they will continue to congregate while the new building is under construction.

Among other examples of changing footprints for religious groups in the area is a building that was added in Wilmington by Temple of Israel. The Reform church dedicated its Rita and Jonathan Reibman Center for Kehillah (A Hebrew term, the word Kehillah signifies “congregation” and “community”) at 922 Market St. in 2015.

Recently, Wilmington Islamic Center submitted site plans to the city of Wilmington for renovations of a building at 315 N. 17th St., and the city’s project tracking website also includes Apostolic Tabernacle’s proposal for a 22,500-square-foot building at 5829 Greenville Loop Road.

Sometimes churches move, and their properties change hands.

Jonathan Washburn, an attorney and a Coldwell Banker Commercial SunCoast broker, represented Trinity Reformed Orthodox Presbyterian Church in the sale last year of property to grocery store chain Aldi.

The property, at 3701 S. College Road, is now home to an Aldi store that opened in July. Aldi paid $2.1 million for the site.

The church was able to coincidentally find property not far from their previous location that was owned by the Presbytery of Coastal Carolina Inc. and also happened to be for sale, Washburn said.

The property is a 4-acre tract near the entrance of the Hidden Valley neighborhood.

The Presbytery had been trying to sell the property, which has a residential zoning that allows churches, for a while with no luck, likely because it couldn’t hold that many houses and would have been difficult to rezone, Washburn said.

As a result, Trinity Reformed Orthodox Presbyterian Church was able to buy the property for $250,000 in January, according to New Hanover County property tax records.

Washburn said the church is currently working on plans for a new facility on its new property, which has more usable land than its previous location.

Sometimes churches can have difficulty finding a buyer for church buildings they can no longer use. These days, some churches are building structures to take that into account.

“People are building churches in a functional way for future development and future conversion to other uses,” Washburn said.