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Bittersweet Farewell to Damaged Church

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More than two years after the tragedy, the congregation of St. James Presbyterian Church gathered behind a chain-link fence in Tarzana on Monday morning to say goodbye to an old friend with laughter, fond memories and more than a few tears.

Behind them, their quake-damaged church sat empty, waiting for the crew that will demolish it beginning this week.

“There’s a lot of memories,” Sandy Combs said. “It’s hard for a building to go down, but it is just a house. We’ll have a new place to worship.”

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Damaged beyond repair in the Northridge earthquake, the 35-year-old church will be replaced by a smaller facility within the next two years, explained pastor Ken Tracy, who joined the congregation in December.

“It’ll match our needs much better,” he said, noting that several items from the original church such as stained-glass windows and wooden pews have been saved for possible reuse.

Tracy joked that the demolition actually began Jan. 17, 1994, the day the quake brought the ceiling crashing onto the empty pews. Church administrator Joanne Dodds, one of the first people on the scene that morning, shuddered at the memory.

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“We couldn’t believe it,” she said, recalling the chest-high piles of debris scattered throughout the spacious sanctuary. “We were really in shock.” For the next year, the congregation met each Sunday in a tent. These days, services are conducted in a small building on the site.

The new church is expected to cost at least $800,000, Tracy said. To help raise money for the project, the church will sell a portion of its Ventura Boulevard property.

Dodds admitted the delay has been frustrating but said that excitement is building in the congregation over the design and imminent construction of the new church.

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“It’s the people that make the church,” she said. “There’s a real feeling of holding together and we’re still doing that.”

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