Coming Sunday An in-depth look at the impacts of the quickly expanding Flatirons Community Church on Lafayette

The choice unit in a Lafayette strip mall that sparked a turf war between the massive Flatirons Community Church and a family-owned business staunchly committed to staying put may be headed to court.

The property at issue is a corner slot in the Lafayette Marketplace, 400 E. South Boulder Road, now occupied by Lafayette Music. Across the street sits the church, which has bought out the complex — except Jax Ranch & Home and the Herbal Wellness marijuana dispensary — and has made repeated efforts to coax the music store out of its spot instead of letting the owners’ lease expire naturally in three years.

Determined not to cave to the megachurch’s wishes, Lafayette Music’s owners, Mark and Janet Benassi, are gearing up for a legal battle. On Monday, they launched a crowdfunding page they hope will cover $15,000 in anticipated attorney fees.

Lafayette Music’s poor relationship with Flatirons was preceded by a poor relationship with Jim Quinlan, who sold the Marketplace to Flatirons in February for $2.75 million. Quinlan told the Camera in December that the Benassis had fallen about $50,000 behind on rent, but the music store owners countered with allegations that Quinlan and the Flatirons staffers with whom he was negotiating were going out of their way to make life difficult for the store.

“Ever since the church bought (the complex), they’ve made it clear that they want us out of the space,” Mark Benassi said. “My guess is they want to rip this thing out and turn it into a worship center. That’s speculation, and I’m sure they’ll never admit it until they actually do it, but you gotta ask: Why are they so obsessed with getting rid of us?”

Paul Brunner, Flatirons’ executive pastor, insists it’s nothing personal.

“As we stepped into ownership of Lafayette Marketplace, one of the core initiatives to bring commerce to the market was the idea of moving our offices into a portion of the facility,” Brunner wrote in an email Wednesday. “The best configuration for this build-out happened to utilize the space that the music store currently occupies.”

The church offered to relocate the music store to another spot in the marketplace that is now vacant and was most recently occupied by Thai Kitchen. Had the Benassis agreed, Flatirons was prepared to cover the roughly $100,000 moving cost and an entire year of rent.

The couple declined that offer, mainly on the grounds that the former Thai Kitchen space is less visible than their current spot and isn’t handicap accessible — not to mention, Mark Benassi added, the fact that it’s laid out for a restaurant, not a vendor of dry goods.

Flatirons returned with a different plan, offering to move the music store out of the complex and into a nearby space, again promising to cover moving expenses as well as tenant finishes for the new space and the difference in rent for the remaining three years of the store’s current lease.

“We said, ‘Forget it,'” Benassi said. “They wanted to bring us a couple hundred yards away. Well, the parking lot there is full of potholes. The building looks like crap. The paint is flaking. No way are we going to move over there. We figured being over there would have lost us easily $5,000 a month in business, but they’re acting like they’re doing us a favor.”

Lafayette Music came back with an alternative solution, in which the church would pay $600,000 to buy out the store’s final three years. Flatirons called the offer “exorbitant.”

The stalemate may turn into a lawsuit soon, with Brunner noting in his email that Flatirons is allowed, as landlord, to move the music store to another space within the complex if the square footage of the new location is greater than or equal to that of the previous.

“The church’s attorney interprets this as, as long as it’s the same square footage, that’s what you get,” Benassi said. “They’ve said if we don’t agree to this, they’ll evict us.

“They have millions of dollars and they can drive us into the ground, so we gotta raise money.”

The GoFundMe campaign had raised $345 as of Wednesday evening.

Brunner called the fundraising campaign an attempt to “defame” his church with a misleading narrative that ignores the facts of the lease agreement.

“It’s only defamation if it isn’t the truth,” Benassi responded.

Brunner maintains the church is sympathetic to the store’s needs but can only do so much in the way of good-faith negotiation.

“We understand the fear and apprehension the Benassis have regarding this change and have gone to great lengths to provide good and wise alternatives for their business,” the pastor said. “It is tragic that they’re unwilling to consider reasonable solutions.”

Alex Burness: 303-473-1389, burnessa@dailycamera.com or twitter.com/alex_burness