Woodland church, property owner go back and forth over breaking 20-year lease
By Maricela De La Cruz
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WOODLAND, California (KCRA) — A Woodland pastor is fighting to keep his church open after being forced to close its doors because of safety issues in the building that they lease.
“She emailed me today saying, ‘You’ve known about this shutdown for months now, and you guys need to get out by Friday,'” said Pastor Raúl Castillo, who has been leasing a space at the Woodland County Fair Mall.
He’s been providing services at Grace and New Hope Church since 2018. He said that his 20-year lease is being broken by the mall property owners.
“As a pastor, it is weighing on me a lot, but as a believer, I know that God has something in store for us,” Castillo said.
Matt Flint, the Woodland fire marshal, told KCRA 3 that they found significant fire code violations concerning the fire suppression system on Dec. 8.
The property managers were told to conduct a fire watch until the system was fixed. According to a letter from Woodland Fire sent to the property manager on Jan. 18, those watches were not being done and the building needed to be vacated.
Flint said repairs were made in the JC Penney section of the building, but the owners decided to vacate the remaining section of the mall.
Castillo, who said he was never told about this, is struggling to find a valid reason as to why the rest of the building was not met with the same safety actions.
With one more day to vacate, he’s making one request to the company that’s breaking the lease: “Give us $200,000 and 90 days and we’ll get out.”
The company told us that they offered that amount and that the church owner refused to leave.
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