In 2023, Noam Krasniansky and his wife, Irene, purchased the long-vacant Euclid Methodist Church in St. Petersburg with a dream of restoring the nearly century-old landmark and transforming it into a gathering place for the community.
Three years later, that dream has become the subject of a federal lawsuit.
Treehouse Sanctuary, Inc., the nonprofit religious organization established by the Krasnianskys, filed suit against the City of St. Petersburg Oct. 12. According to Krasniansky, Mayor Ken Welch was formally served Friday.
The 30-page complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, alleges that the city violated the organization’s constitutional and religious freedom protections by preventing it from holding worship services and other gatherings at the historic church.
“For a year the city shut us down as a church. We tried again, and again, and again with diplomacy,” Krasniansky said. “We reached out to the mayor three times, the City Attorney, twice, with no response.”
“We were shut down without recourse,” he added. “We’ve put all of our life savings into this – we put everything on the line.”
Built in 1926, the church at 919 10th Avenue N. once served as a thriving religious institution. According to historical documentation cited in the complaint, approximately 1,250 people attended its opening service on Thanksgiving Day that year.
The property later fell into disuse, and efforts to repurpose it repeatedly encountered obstacles.
In 2019, a previous proposal to convert the church into approximately 20 residential units received city approval but was ultimately abandoned amid neighborhood opposition.
The Krasnianskys purchased the property for approximately $1.1 million, envisioning a distinctive event venue featuring weddings, corporate gatherings, a tearoom and overnight accommodations. Their proposal, called Treehouse, would preserve the building’s historic architecture while providing revenue for its restoration.
The project faced opposition over parking, noise and compatibility with the surrounding neighborhood.
Although city staff recommended approval, the Community Planning and Preservation Commission deadlocked 3-3 in November 2024. The couple appealed, but City Council also split 4-4 in February 2025, leaving the proposal denied.
The couple had already invested hundreds of thousands of dollars into the deteriorating property, including post-hurricane repairs.
They continued restoring the building, scraping layers of paint from its massive doors to reveal the brass beneath. Krasniansky recalled former churchgoers stopping by to admire the work, some sharing memories of weddings held there decades earlier.
But without approval for the commercial venue, the couple needed another way forward.
“The only way to steward the building and preserve it was to keep it as a church – it was the only path,” Krasniansky said.
The couple established Treehouse Sanctuary as an interfaith religious organization, seeking to return the property to its original function as a place of worship while accommodating weddings, faith-based gatherings and community activities.
The Sanctuary opened in August 2025, but its operations were short-lived.
According to the lawsuit, a celebratory gathering attended by approximately 120 young adults generated complaints to authorities. The complaint alleges police found no noise violations and emergency responders discovered no medical emergencies despite a report that eight people had fainted.
The following day, approximately 500 people attended a community market over six hours.
City fire officials subsequently inspected the building. By September 2025, the Fire Department had ordered the property to close.
At the center of the dispute is the removal of fixed sanctuary seating.
The nonprofit maintains that flexible seating is necessary to accommodate different religious traditions and that removing chairs did not change the building’s fundamental use as a religious assembly space.
The city, according to correspondence described in the complaint, determined that removal of fixed seating, basement partitions and ceiling finishes constituted significant modifications requiring a change-of-use review and additional fire-safety improvements.
Those requirements included an automatic sprinkler system and voice alarm system.
The Sanctuary argues that the improvements would require extensive structural work, impose significant costs and potentially damage the historic interior. Its architect proposed alternative life-safety measures in February 2026, but the city rejected the requested waiver in March.
The lawsuit does not dispute the importance of fire safety. Rather, it challenges whether the city can require those particular improvements as a condition of continuing religious worship.
The complaint identifies several other St. Petersburg religious institutions that allegedly operate with flexible seating or host secular events without facing comparable requirements.
Among them are Allendale United Methodist Church, St. Pete First United Methodist Church and First Baptist Church.
The plaintiffs contend that the city’s enforcement violates the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause, the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, the federal Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act and Florida’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
These allegations have not been adjudicated, and the city’s full legal response was not available in the materials reviewed.
The complaint also states that the continuing restrictions have prevented weddings, religious gatherings and charitable activities, contributing to financial losses and bankruptcy proceedings involving property owner Treehouse Development Group, LLC.
Asked what outcome he would consider acceptable, Krasniansky compared the city’s requirements to a mechanic repeatedly changing the conditions for allowing someone to drive their own vehicle.
“If you buy a car, and someone suddenly says, ‘You cannot use the car because the PSI in your tires is too low.’ So you change the PSI, then they say, ‘Actually, it’s not the tires, it’s the hubcaps,’” he said.
“I want my rights back,” he declared. “The city is wielding all their authority over my entire life savings. And it’s just not about me, but the freedom to practice religious rights. This is not the Soviet Union. They have no right to tell me we cannot have this church. That’s why we have a constitution.”
The lawsuit seeks declaratory and injunctive relief allowing Treehouse Sanctuary to resume religious worship, weddings, faith-based gatherings and community events, while challenging the city’s enforcement of its change-of-use and fire-safety requirements.
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