Crosswinds Church Has Deal to Buy Plainfield's Former Police Station

If there’s a fine line between saint and sinner, there may be no better place for a church than a building that once housed police officers and criminals.

has leased the former Plainfield Police Station at 14300 S. Route 59 from the village for more than a year, and is ready now to make it their permanent home, Community Pastor Ken Schultz said. On Friday, the is set to approve the sale of the 8,000-square-foot building and the six acres on which it sits to the church for $400,000.

Until Crosswinds moved in last year, the building had been vacant for four years. The moved into its new station at 14300 Coil Plus Drive in 2006.

When Crosswinds officials signed a three-year lease last year, they knew they might want to buy the building and included a clause that would allow them to do so, Schultz said.

And after all of the work they’ve put into converting the old station into a house of worship – hours of demolition, construction and painting – it makes sense to take the next step and put down roots, said Schultz, who oversees the Christian Bible church with Preaching Pastor John Stillman.

“It’s worked out really well for us,” Schultz said. “(The congregation) is pretty excited about having a permanent site to worship.”

Crosswinds has been a bit nomadic in the six years since it became a sponsored offshoot of in Plainfield, he said. They held services at for a couple of years, and then were based in a strip mall at U.S. 30 and 143rd Street until they were told they’d need to find a new home, Schultz said.

The church has about 200 members, about 130 of which actively attend services every Sunday. The assembly area can seat 170, Schultz said. The church also has Bible study programs for men and women and programs for teens and children.