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Letter to the Editor: Group organized to ‘Save the Palace theater’

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Sign our petitions not to rezone the Palace Springfield theater. It is and was a planned development for our neighborhood, Chesterfield Village. We do not wish to rezone for a general retail district.

We have volunteers out to petition for 30 percent of those people who own buildings and residential places to have their notarized owners place their signatures on a rezoning petition for the city clerk’s office. Voice your need to save the palace in petition form so we as a group can go to the May 4 hearing at City Hall to say no to rezoning the Palace.

It saves jobs, and tax revenues for schools and libraries. In fact, our neighborhood had [Life360 Church] pastor [Tom] Cederblom come to a Chesterfield Village Homeowners Association meeting. He and his real estate partner told us Life360 Church-Park Crest sold the back lot to an independent contractor for residential homes. I asked why the church did not remodel and use their lot [3851 S. Kansas Ave.], and Cederblom said the Palace area fits with the church’s target market of middle class professionals. I told him we are a majority of retired residents.

I wonder if the church will accept the residents next door to the west in the lower income apartments or the retirement home residents? I do not feel the spirit of God or Christ. I told him to check Mathew 7:16-17 and the entire book.

The point is this contract is based on contingency of rezoning to retail to let a church replace a landmark, the Palace theater. The Palace is making money with its new (format). The Life360 Assemblies of God church, which should be for Christ’s purpose and not its own, thinks this is a done deal.

We want to save real estate values.

What’s next: No dancing, drinking or no show but entertainment you pay for with Assemblies of God? Look at all the properties the denomination owns – no taxes.

For petition signing, call our captain for this: Debra McCurter at (417) 890-9477. Call your councilmen and councilwomen to declare no rezoning for Palace theater.

—Anna Crane, Springfield

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