Sunday’s first services at new South Beach Church took 13 years of searching, planning and building

By QUINTON SMITH/Lincoln Chronicle

NEWPORT – When Luke Frechette opens his first service at 9 a.m. Sunday it will be the culmination of 13 years of thinking, searching, planning and then raising millions to help South Beach Church build its own place of worship.

Although the church got permission to hold Christmas Eve services in the unfinished structure, Sunday’s two services in the $7.8 million building are expected to draw up to 1,200 worshippers from across the state.

It’s the culmination of the largest private construction project in Newport in decades.

“It took 13 years,” Frechette said in an interview with the Lincoln Chronicle. “God’s vision here has been unparalleled. Churches can’t do with without supporters.”

Indeed.

While the church has been raising and saving money for the project for years, a lot of the work – from preparing the land to painting to installing donated kitchen equipment – has been done by volunteers. Frechette even helped clear land by learning to run a donated bulldozer after the church purchased the 12 acres adjacent to the Wilder development in South Beach.

The new building also means South Beach Church can consolidate some of its activities now spread across five locations in Newport, including its administrative offices on the north side of the Yaquina Bay Bridge. While South Beach’s K-12 school will for now stay in two locations in Newport, completion of the church building is a major step in eventually establishing a larger campus to include the school – once it settles into the main structure and has time to re-focus on expansion.

The church that later became South Beach Church started in 1999 when its first pastor began meeting in the restaurant of Frechette’s parents. Luke Frechette is its sixth leader, returning to Newport from Ashland in 2010 and is the one most responsible for its growth.

Congregants met for a long time in the metal shell of a former marine building along U.S. Highway 101 in South Beach, with Frechette holding his first service there in September 2010. Twenty people attended.

The owner sold the building to the city of Newport in 2013, which gave the church three years to find a new home as it planned to raze the structure and attract a motel or other business to the property.

The church grew and grew, attracting hundreds to services and other programs, even in 2020 when it had to move online for 26 weeks because of the pandemic.

“We never went backwards,” Frechette said. “It was the most wild of church growth.”

Although the city’s attempt to attract a business to the property fell through, the deadline increased Frechette’s search for a new home. The church has been holding services at Newport Foursquare Church since 2024.

Frechette said he looked at a dozen properties and designed 26 possible buildings with the help of Dustin and Amanda Capri, church members who own Capri Architecture in Newport and who designed the new structure.

“We spent years and years looking for land,” he said, finally able to purchase the 12 acres on Southeast 40^th Street from Dave Stocker, who had previously posted “No Trespassing” signs on it.

Work on the property

Site preparation began in September 2023, grading work the next May and concrete footings and the slab poured in September 2024. E&M Constructors of Portland is the general contractor, but much of the work “to the best of our ability,” says Frechette, was done by local contractors and volunteers.

Still, as Frechette and most contractors will attest, the pandemic nearly doubled the cost of the project.

Each year, Frechette said, the church would take all of its donations for the last five months and put it aside for the project – often $100,000 a month. “We put every penny we didn’t spend (on operations) into that account,” he said.

The 20,000-square-foot steel structure began going up in November 2024, with the metal siding and roof following.

This week, landscape crews and volunteers scurried over the property to get the land and building ready for Sunday.

Glass garage doors serve as the entrance to a space that can also double as a multipurpose room. To the west is the sanctuary’s entrance, which includes a coffee bar. Straight through the room leads to a row of classrooms, then offices for Frechette and the church’s eight-member staff.

The church sits above the tsunami zone and is ready to serve as an emergency gathering place, Frechette said.

The 8,000 square-foot sanctuary – painted in the church’s signature black – has a massive stage for its music-driven services and can hold 600 worshippers in seats and 1,000 standing. It is heavily insulated to avoid the music bothering neighbors – the only one currently close by is the Hatfield Marine Science Center dormitory across the street.

The church also bought the 2½ acres of land at the corner of Southeast 40^th and Highway 101 from Stocker’s family and this week painted the massive shell of the unfinished fishing boat there black. It plans to add the church’s logo on Friday. Frechette said there are no current plans for the property.

And Sunday morning?

“This is going to be a milestone Sunday,” Frechette said. “It’s a Sunday we’ve been planning for and enduring for years. It will be very special.”

• Quinton Smith is the editor of Lincoln Chronicle and can be reached at [email protected]