The condo craze at the shore is claiming one of the city's most historic churches, and that may not be bad.

The Franklin Street Methodist Church, an 1879 landmark on the National Register of Historic Places, is being gutted and converted into three luxury condo units. It is also being saved from the wrecking ball.

That is the tradeoff. The condo conversation has been approved and will be closely monitored by the Cape May Historic Preservation Commission. For all intents and purposes, the building's exterior will still be the Franklin Street Methodist Church.

"You won't know from the outside. It's one of the top 100 churches on the National Registry, so you really can't make any changes," said Bill Saponaro, whose Saponaro Enterprises is doing the project.

While condominium development has received its share of bad press here at America's Oldest Seashore Resort, and in other towns along the coast, the bottom line here is that the highest and best use for the property - a church - was no longer feasible.

The parish of the traditionally black church grew old and died off. Trends, including plenty of U.S. Census figures, were showing that the black population in the city was in major decline. The church was down to only eight members when it merged two years ago with the neighboring First United Methodist Church of Cape May.

Matthew Morgan, a contractor on the project, said the few parishioners left did not want it turned into a commercial use, but most could accept residential housing.

"It's going from a house of God to a house for somebody," Morgan said.

There had been a plan to turn the church into stores but it went nowhere, and the building continued to decay. That's when Saponaro, a Washington Street resident who owns an antique store on Schellenger's Landing, swooped in with $750,000. The offer was accepted for a church originally built by Cape Island Baptists and sold to the Methodists in 1915.

With the area zoned for multi-family construction, and a lack of parking for retail uses, Saponaro decided to slice the interior into three luxury condominiums that will sell for $1.1 million for the cheapest unit and $1.5 million for the most expensive. Saponaro will also pump about $1.5 million into renovating the building. This includes restoring stained glass windows, using blue slate sidewalks, installing original 1899 gas lamps, and many other touches that will add to the historic setting at one of the busiest areas of town.

The three units will be the size of houses, ranging from 2,200 to 2,900 square feet. There will be 15-foot ceilings on the bottom floor, where the bedrooms are, and 27-foot ceilings on the great rooms on the second floor. The second floor bell tower will be a library for one of the units. A drop ceiling that hid much of the interior ceiling has been removed to reveal ornate herringbone woodwork. Three unknown windows buried under later construction, including a 168-square foot stained glass window, have been discovered.

Saponaro knows the bad press condominiums have, and prefers to call the units townhouses. He also pointed out, however, that having a condominium association ensures the building will never fall into such a serious state of disrepair again. The monthly condominium fees will provide money for upkeep.

The Mid-Atlantic Center for the Arts, or MAC, could also benefit from the project. MAC turned Saponaro's Washington Street home into a "Designer Show House" this year, and it became one of the leading tours at a time when MAC's business was way down. MAC Director Michael Zuckerman said 48,000 people toured the home, paying from $5 to $15 each.

"It helped us out at a time when many other tours were declining. I don't want to think about how much deeper in the hole we could be without that," Zuckerman said.

Zuckerman said MAC is negotiating with Saponaro to do the same thing next year with the church. Designers would work on different rooms and people would pay to see their ideas. The designers, selling things such as kitchens, paint and floor tiles, get to drum up new business, and so does MAC. Zuckerman called it "very likely" a deal will be reached. Saponaro said the church units would be completed for the show and the new residents would move in after the summer.

When they move in, they will be entering a building that looks like a church on the outside. It may even look more like the church looked in 1879, since Saponaro believes it was not always yellow but was initially a khaki color with white. Each unit will have it's own entrance, patio and garden. There are no shared hallways or common areas as in some other condo projects.

"It never feels like a condo. It's condo because that's a form of ownership, but it's more like three single-family houses," Saponaro said.

He also noted the large size of the units separates the projects from some others, where many more units are stuck on smaller lots and there isn't enough parking for the cars that will use them.

"That should stop," Saponaro said.

Much of the interior will be saved. Even some of the oak pews will be used to create beds used in the designer show.