Divine living: marketing and selling churches as lofts in Toronto, Canada

The article starts by framing the loft movement and placing its origins in 1980s Manhattan. These post-industrial lofts promoted inner-city living for the middle class, and the practice soon spread to other cities around the world. The article uses the examples of Montreal and Sydney, Australia. The main purpose of the article is to address \“how an institutional culture, like religion, [has] become represented and accepted as a distinct commodity in the endeavour to produce and sell homes\” (Lynch, 2014, p. 196)? Lynch identifies three components to the successful resale and reuse of churches. The first is to re-image the church building in a way that separates the religion from the building, suggesting that marketing goals be embedded as a \“spiritual past not a religious present\” (Lynch, 2014, p. 197). The second component is to frame the new units in a way that highlights the uniqueness of living in a church. This section of the article describes how to use the marketing method of \“condo stories\” \– a narrative about the building \– to help advertise the new and unique living spaces. Within this section, there is mention of naming the project and how controversial it can be. Lynch suggests finding a name that may reference religion as an \“artefact of the past\” (p.205), but not making an explicit link to religion in the name. The third component of successful resale and reuse of churches that Lynch outlines in this article is providing context to the building. In this section the focus of the church conversion is on the local area, and how there are many inner-city neighbourhoods in Toronto that have the possibility for this type of reuse. The article suggests that advertising the amenities in the area is a good way to promote the change from institutional to residential land use, highlighting the proximity to points of interest the new urbanite is seeking. The article concludes that effects of church conversion into residential lofts may have gentrification impacts, however there is further research required on that topic.