Further commenting on the status of the University Baptist Church building, Carbondale has a pretty poor track record of getting land lords to maintain the condition of larger buildings with no tenants. Cases in point, the Johnson Hotel on North Illinois is now a parking lot. Once the Stage Company left the old bank building at the corner of Main and Washington due to the landlord not maintaining it, the building quickly deteriorated further and now there is a grassy area with a fountain.
Tuscan Lodge eventually needed several hundred thousand dollars worth of renovation to bring it up to code, so the owner surrendered it to the city, which razed it. There's a grassy area where the old high school, occupied for a time by the Boys and Girls' Club, stood on North Springer.
University Baptist Church has someone willing to take over use and maintenance of the building. Better to put it to some sort of use than to leave it sit empty in the hope that some other buyer might come along. Remember at the time it was built, the building was a school on the edge of Carbondale. The housing grew up around it, before the city ever put zoning into place. That is why the town has a converted National Guard armoury and a former Coca Cola distributorship at the intersection of Sycamore and Oakland.
You could add that the Walnut Street Baptist Church was occupied by squatters. When they were removed, it was burned by arsonists. Perhaps the devil you know is better than the one you don't know.
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