Lakewood Ranch church completes $7.7M 'blessing' of an expansion

Cornerstone Church of Lakewood Ranch is wrapping up a $7.7 million expansion — a project that represents a milestone in the Presbyterian church's 33-year history.  

That goes back to 1993, when a group of under 50 congregants worshiped at the Parkway 8 Cinema on Lockwood Ridge Road, on the Sarasota County side University Parkway, just south of Manatee County. By 2002, the church found a home of its own in Lakewood Ranch, but it was “in the country” and hadn’t been built yet. 

Most of the members lived in Sarasota and didn’t want to drive a dirt road to church. 

However, just like the surrounding community of Lakewood Ranch, there was a vision for what that eight-acre cow pasture could become. 

That vision has since been fulfilled. 

Photo by Lesley Dwyer

The 8 acres of prime Lakewood Ranch real estate near the corner of University Parkway and Lorraine Road cost about $100,000 to purchase. 

Now, the property holds a 37,000-square-foot campus that includes a 10,000-square-foot sanctuary, a reception area, coffee bar, administration offices, a youth wing, playground and athletic court. And in addition to the stage and rows of pews, there's an overhead microlight gallery that resembles stained glass. More meeting spaces were built out upstairs, and an athletic court was installed outside.

The new sanctuary has a capacity of 600. The current church membership is at about 350 adults and 100 youths, so there’s room to grow. 

Rev. Phil Woods says the church has grown by 20% each year over the past five years. While opening the new sanctuary has the church poised to keep growing, Woods has no aspiration to turn Cornerstone into a mega church, such as nearby Grace Community Church or Bayside Community Church.

Woods enjoys the intimacy of a smaller congregation. He refers to it as a boutique church. 

Construction began during summer 2024, but it was met with a few delays. While church members funded a large portion of the $7.7 million expansion, Cornerstone needed to take out a loan. When the original lender backed out, construction had to stop for nine months until they found a new lender. 

Then, there was a one-ton glass panel that broke during the installation. Woods says that one made him cry inside. The panel took three months to arrive from China, and the vacuum lifter malfunctioned. When the panel dropped, the glass shattered. 

“It slowed us down again,” Woods says, “But the end product of the sanctuary is everything we wanted. It’s been a blessing."

This article originally appeared on sister site YourObserver.com.