FORT MILL -- A decade's worth of lawsuits ended in a settlement between York County and the current owners of the former Heritage USA property in a dispute about the 20-story unfinished hotel on the property.
The litigation involved the county and Morningstar Fellowship Church, which inherited the one-time, 52-acre home of televangelist Jim Bakker in 2004. Before its organizational collapse in the late 1980s, Heritage had completed the foundation and exterior of a hotel and timeshare tower on the property on the south side of Regent Parkway off of Star Light Drive. But much of the interior was never finished. Morningstar and the county couldn't agree how to proceed with it.
The lawsuits were at both state and federal levels, and the first goes back to 2013. But the settlement, effective Oct. 10, dismisses all the cases and puts forth a path for work to be done on the decaying building.
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Morningstar is being given 18 months to submit a building permit application to the county, according to the settlement. If not, the structure must be demolished within nine months of that deadline.
Previously, Morningstar entered a development plan in 2006 with York County to turn the building into an assisted living facility. York County said the agreement required Morningstar to produce a bond for the construction within six months.
After the deadline was missed, the county put the tower property in default. That meant it was impossible for Morningstar to do anything with the building, Morningstar president Rick Joyner said in a 2022 YouTube broadcast.
After mediation sessions failed, Morningstar filed a lawsuit against the county in 2013, alleging a breach of the development agreement. A judge dismissed the case, but Morningstar also filed another suit against the county, claiming a federal violation of religious freedom.
"Morningstar's attempts to characterize its dispute with the county as a 'holy war' related to religious liberty and government oppression are a distraction from the real issue and the facts related to the tower," county officials wrote in a May 2022 statement.
This story will be updated.
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