Trinity Broadcasting Plans Entertainment Complex in Tennessee : Ministry: The Tustin-based network, which will buy Twitty City, says the 30-acre gospel and country music facility will cost $13 million to create.

Departing from the conservative fiscal strategy that made it the world’s largest religious television programming service, Trinity Broadcasting Network has announced plans to create a 30-acre, $13-million gospel and country music entertainment complex outside Nashville.

Paul Crouch, founder and president of the Tustin-based network, says Trinity will purchase Twitty City, owned by the family of the late country singer Conway Twitty. In March, Trinity purchased an adjoining attraction, Music Village, USA, which has been renamed Trinity Music City, USA.

Trinity, which is tax-exempt and nonprofit, provides 24-hour-a-day Christian programming to nearly 400 television and radio stations. Together with his wife, Jan, Paul Crouch hosts a nightly Christian talk and variety show called “Praise the Lord,” being broadcast this week from Tennessee to inaugurate the new complex.

“Jan and I are very excited about this opportunity to expand our production facilities at this location,” Crouch said in a prepared statement. Trinity’s plans include its own recording studio and label.

“ ‘Pat Boone’s Gospel America’ weekly television show will be produced here, and we will incorporate the entire complex in the production of the show,” Crouch’s statement said.

“Plans are also underway for a country-gospel music awards show to be broadcast from the site, and consideration is being given to utilizing a part of Twitty City to house a country-gospel hall of fame,” Crouch said.

“Trinity Broadcasting Network is an ideal buyer for the . . . property, as it already owns the adjacent land, Music Village, USA,” said Hugh Carden, president of Conway Twitty Enterprises and co-executor of Twitty’s estate. “The properties complement each other, and it is fitting the purchase was made by another entertainment entity. Their respect for country music has been evident during the negotiation process.”

Music Village, USA, which occupies 21 acres adjoining Twitty City in Hendersonville, Tenn., is a country-music performance center that also houses shops and museums featuring various stars. Trinity paid $10 million for Music City, according to court records.

Trinity’s offer for Twitty City, which has been mired in litigation since Twitty died a year ago, is $2.75 million, according to probate court documents.

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Crouch’s Washington, D.C., attorney, Colby M. May, said in an interview that both the Music City and Twitty City purchases “are straight cash transactions.”

Twitty City includes the homes of Conway Twitty, his 81-year-old mother and his four children, as well as a theater, gift shop, landscaped grounds and gardens. The family members will be required to leave their homes on the grounds, according to terms of purchase agreement.

Unlike many other major religious broadcasters in the 1980s and ‘90s, Trinity survived and prospered by avoiding such high-overhead financial drains as large churches, colleges and theme-park resorts. Crouch frequently boasted to viewers that the network, with an estimated market value of $500 million, never borrowed money to buy stations and eschewed high salaries and production frills.

According to documents filed with the Internal Revenue Service, Trinity listed net assets of just under $100 million.

May, Crouch’s attorney, said that Trinity envisions the new complex as a “vehicle” and a “platform” for using gospel music to “expand the ministry by providing that kind of inspiration to a wider and wider segment of our supporter and viewers. . . . The two facilities are fairly large (efforts) in taking this first step.”

While May said the complex probably will be the site for large-scale crusades and other outreach events, he cautioned against making too much of the move.

“We’re not talking about a Christian theme park,” he said. “This is not going to be an overnight Hollywood East with big overhead.”

Nevertheless, commercials last week on Trinity stations began advertising “Gospel Fanfare” on the grounds of “Trinity Music City” last weekend, inviting people to meet country singer Charlie Daniels, along with the network’s own entertainers.

That event preceded the annual country “Fanfare,” which is taking place all week in Nashville and is sponsored by the Country Music Assn., a convention where fans of recording stars line up to meet their favorite performers.

Trinity’s move into the music industry may represent a risk. In 1990, Trinity announced an ambitious plan to make inspirational movies and established its own film division, Trinity Films, to produce them. Its first effort, “China Cry,” was well-received, but according to documents filed with the IRS, Trinity Films still owes more than $8 million to Trinity Broadcasting Network.

Trinity and associated organizations controlled or financed by the network or other Crouch family members own more than a dozen television stations in the United States. In addition to flagship KTBN Channel 40 in Orange County, Trinity owns outlets in Miami, Dallas and Atlanta.

Trinity has an affiliated station in the area of the new complex, which will move its production studios from Gallatin, Tenn., the network said, into a structure that is a replica of Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello.

That station, WPGD, is controlled by Jay Sekulow, a high-profile attorney known for successfully arguing landmark cases on behalf of evangelicals before the U.S. Supreme Court. Sekulow also has his own show on Trinity.

Among Trinity’s liabilities listed with the IRS in 1992, the last year for which figures are available, was an unsecured loan of $1.5 million to Sekulow’s broadcasting company, Sonlight.

According to its April, 1994, newsletter, Trinity has 390 owned and affiliated radio and television stations around the world, “now reaching a potential viewing audience of 70 million in America.”

In the same newsletter, Crouch wrote that, in addition to these over-the-air outlets, “Direct Broadcast Satellite (DBS) and the Information Superhighway are coming. The day is fast approaching when we will literally have access to virtually every soul on Planet Earth!”

The Nashville Tennessean contributed to this story.