Members say Stoney Creek United Church has started the process of finding a new home.

Council chair Doug Caldwell said the historic church is up for sale after an idea to address change last year presented too many challenges.

“Everybody feels bad about leaving behind an old home, but there are changes in life and this is one of them,” he said, adding the church was put on the market about two weeks ago through Colliers International. “Lots of our members have gone through the downsizing of family homes and leaving behind all of those memories, so they understand it’s time to move on.”

The church — which is asking about $2.8 million for its more than 23,000-square-foot building at 1 King St. W. — was exploring a plan to compensate for lower attendance and increasing maintenance costs last summer.

Its strategy included replacing the building with a smaller one and adding affordable housing to the site through a partnership with Hamilton East Kiwanis Non-Profit Homes Inc.

Caldwell said the idea was to remain in the community and take care of young families, but the plan started to hit a few obstacles.

There was concern about acquiring the needed rezoning — institutional to residential, he said.

“Getting the zoning was not by any means certain,” Caldwell said. “We did not have a strong, positive response from city officials.”

Caldwell said there also was some doubt around the project’s economic feasibility.

Hamilton East Kiwanis Non-Profit Homes Inc. staff worked all of the numbers in terms of how many apartments could fit on the site and the view was that it was “less likely than likely that the project would be financially viable,” he said.

“We determined that it would be a year or two of uncertainty and another two or three years to get it done, if it were possible to get it done,” Caldwell said. “We just didn’t have the stomach for the period of uncertainty that would be involved in this kind of project.”

Stoney Creek United Church — originally a Methodist church — became one of the first united churches in Canada in 1925 at 1 King St. W.

Caldwell said the church has established some criteria for what it’s looking for in a new home and would prefer to find something within two kilometres of where it is now, if possible.

“It’s hard to get specific on the search, until you know what the timing is,” he said. “We are really open to people coming to us and saying, ‘Hey, I got a place you can turn into a church,’ or ‘I’ve got a church that I’ll share with you,’ that sort of thing.”

Asked what his hopes are for the church’s building, Caldwell said he’d like to see another church there in the future.

“In a perfect world, in our view, another church that needs that much space and has a few more financial resources would buy it and it would continue to be a holy place,” he said. “If not, then someone else will buy it and do something else.”