Town in crisis

The town in which I live is facing a crisis. It's a small farm country town with a population of around 5000, about 50 miles from Washington DC. It's 10 miles from a much larger town with a population of around 60,000. A local religious group wants to purchase 224 acres of land currently designated for agricultural use. Their plan is to build a church and conferencing facility to host regular weekend events for their local congregation and also an annual gathering which draws in upwards of 10,000 people for 3 to 5 days.
There has been an uprising! The main claim by the outraged townsfolk is that the towns infrastructure (roads, sewer and water) cannot accommodate the increased load, and that overall the character of the town would be changed.
This sounds reasonable until you do a little research and find that hundreds of new homes have been built in the town in recent years and hundreds more are planned, the land having already been rezoned and bought by a nationally well-known home builder. The road that skirts the town, on which the 224 acres is located, is already scheduled to be upgraded to dual lanes. At least three very large churches have been built on ex-farm land in recent years too. In all the hullabaloo over this issue, people have resigned from the boards tasked with governing the towns affairs, "grass-roots" citizens organizations have been formed, and I'm expecting the sales of pitchforks and flaming torches to increase too.

Now, could the real reason for the uprising be that this particular religious group is of the Islamic persuasion? Surely not. The townsfolk say that has no bearing whatsoever, but I'm not convinced. The next hearing is on January 8th. It should be an interesting affair.