- December 13, 2025
The First United Methodist Church of Ormond Beach will be getting demolishing and rebuilding one of its buildings.
Located at 336 South Halifax Drive, the church has applied for a special exception to demolish the southern gathering hall building, the south parking lot and the covered breezeway attaching the building to the northern building. The Ormond Beach City Commission approved the application 5-0.
Commissioner Harold Briley said his parents and some of his father’s siblings were married in the church and he himself was christened in the old sanctuary.
“It’s going to be tough to see it go,” he said.
The building has been on the site since the 1950s and is just over 20,300 square feet in size. Its replacement will be approximately 23,311 square feet in size and two stories.
The new building will serve as a multi-purpose gathering room with educational classrooms, restrooms and kitchen facilities. A schematic of the new building shows there will be multiple smaller rooms and two large meeting rooms that can be separated or joined together with the moving partition.
The construction work will also include reconfiguring the southern parking lot and replacing the west walls separating the church from the residential neighborhood. The church plans to have the breezeway also rebuilt to the main church.
The replacement west wall will be a vinyl fence most of the way around, except for one section that will be a three-foot retaining wall.
The building will also be moved further away from the residential area.
When the construction is complete, the upgraded lot will have additional parking spaces, for a total number of 214 parking spaces, according to meeting documents.
The project will likely take between 12 and 18 months to complete, according to attorney Jessica Gow from Cobb Cole, representing the church.
