Altering blocks to house the flocks

Deirdre Newman

Church leaders are used to dealing with the trials and tribulations

of their congregation members, but many have dealt with crucibles of

their own in trying to remodel or expand within their residential

communities.

Several churches in residential areas of Newport-Mesa have

encountered neighborhood opposition in recent years when trying to

increase their facilities. Some move to commercial areas, thereby

avoiding a fight. Others stay and try to compromise with their

neighbors. For those that do stay put, each uses different tactics to

win over their neighbors.

One tactic is creating dialogue.

“We have been talking with the neighbors over the last two years,”

said the Rev. John Huffman of Newport Beach’s St. Andrew’s Church.

He is spearheading an effort to develop almost 40,000 square feet of

new space on the church’s four-acre campus.

TALKING IT OUT

St. Andrew’s, and another Newport Beach church looking to expand,

Our Lady Queen of Angels, are trying to work with neighbors to come

up with mutually acceptable plans.

Expansion plans for St. Andrew’s Church, which sits across from

Newport Harbor High School, are working their way through the Newport

Beach Planning Commission. The next scheduled hearing is July 22,

when the commission will consider the zoning change and general plan

amendment church leaders need to move forward with plans.

Plans for renovating the campus between Clay and 15th streets call

for adding 39,950 square feet of facilities that include a new youth

and family center and building a parking garage. Some residents

believe the church’s plans are too grandiose and have spoken out

vociferously against them. Opponents are mainly concerned with the

size of the project and potential traffic and parking problems.

“It’s like trying to put 10 pounds of sand in a 5-pound bag,”

neighbor Richard England said. “That’s one of the basic precepts.

It’s too big for the plot they have.”

Because of the opposition, church officials have requested two

continuances from the Planning Commission, Huffman said. Discussions

are going on behind the scenes with neighbors and city officials,

Huffman added.

As a neighbor of John Wayne Airport, Huffman said he understands

what it’s like to have concerns about something you live close to.

The pastor said he is amenable to paring down the square footage of

the expansion as a compromise, but he expects the opposition to make

some compromises, as well.

As a pastor looking toward retirement, Huffman said he wants his

legacy to transcend a physical building.

“As a 64-year-old pastor who’s served his church for 26 years and

is into the final years of my ministry, I want these to be years of

healthful, positive, Christ-centered ministry, not years that are

evaluated in bricks and mortar,” he said.

DEALING UPFRONT

At Our Lady Queen of Angels, church leaders plan to expand into

neighboring St. Mark Presbyterian Church and retain the combined

seating capacity of 1,222 in the two sanctuaries. The leaders have

also tried the diplomatic approach with neighboring residents.

And while the plans have been in the works for several years now,

no application has been filed with the city because church officials

are still tweaking plans to ensure it fits with the neighborhood,

Project Manager Scott Barnard said.

“[The project] used to be 30,000 square feet ... then it was

25,000 square feet,” Barnard said. “Now we’re still trimming it down

to about 23,000 square feet. We keep trimming away at it.”

Plans also once called for the height of the church to soar 130

feet. Now it’s shrunk to about 55 feet, Barnard added.

Church officials are also looking to expand Our Lady Queen of

Angels school by adding a classroom for each of the nine grades at

the school.

Our Lady Queen of Angels, in the Eastbluff area, is across the

street from another Newport-Mesa high school, Corona del Mar High

School. It has become such a congested traffic zone that Newport

Beach City Councilman Gary Adams has created a task force to study

the traffic problems and come up with some solutions, Barnard said.

Barry Eaton, president of the Eastbluff Homeowners Assn. and a

Newport Beach Planning Commissioner, is on the task force and said he

believes it’s helpful that Our Lady Queen of Angels is participating.

“They have three or four people going to the task force meetings

and are volunteering some ideas as to help [Corona del Mar] High

School also,” Eaton said. “The biggest problem is the high school,

actually, because of all the kids coming from Newport Coast.”

St. Andrew’s and Our Lady Queen of Angels are both following in

the footsteps of the first Mormon Temple in Orange County, which was

the center of a long and heated community debate after some neighbors

objected to the 124-foot steeple and other visual elements of the

original plans.

Through a series of public meetings and discussions, the Newport

Beach church ultimately agreed to a steeple shortened to 90 feet. The

outside lighting and the color of the building were also toned down

to blend in better with the area.

The 17,575-square-foot project, which is next to the Mormon stake

center on Bonita Canyon Drive, broke ground in August.

MOVING ON OUT

Other churches deal with expansion by moving to commercial areas,

thereby removing themselves from the hornet’s nest of residential

opposition.

St. Mark Presbyterian Church in Newport Beach is in the process of

moving to an area where it can spread out.

The church is able to move because of a deal its leaders struck

with Our Lady Queen of Angels, which is in escrow to purchase

property for St. Mark at the corner of MacArthur Boulevard and San

Joaquin Hills Road. In exchange, St. Mark will give Our Lady Queen of

Angels its current property.

“We’re in a wonderful, win-win transaction,” St. Mark Pastor Gary

Collins said.

As soon as St. Mark gets approval for its project from Newport

Beach, it can start building its facility, and Our Lady Queen of

Angels will take over its property.

The new commercial location will afford more space than St. Mark

now has and will also enable the church to have an office for its

community counseling center. The center is now in a temporary

building.

A LENGTHY MOVE

In 2002, a Costa Mesa church renamed itself to depict the hurdles

it successfully jumped in moving from one part of town to another.

The Calvary Church of Newport Mesa moved from a residential area to a

commercial area and renamed itself The Crossing. Church officials

wanted to move to a larger, more state-of-the-art facility on Newport

Boulevard that gives churchgoers much-needed accessibility and room,

Pastor Tim Celek said at the time of the move.

Church officials had originally planned to double the size of the

former Orange Avenue campus and add a new sanctuary, educational

buildings, a four-level parking structure and a multipurpose room --

all in one step. But they were stalled by a citywide moratorium on

small-lot development, which made it nearly impossible to market the

Orange Avenue property to potential buyers.

After the plans had been temporarily chopped in half, Celek and

his colleagues went to Costa Mesa officials to ask for approval of a

temporary structure to hold worship services until a second phase

could be financed and completed.

The Costa Mesa Planning Commission denied the request because

commission members felt it would not be compatible with its

surroundings and would set a precedent for other churches or

organizations that say they have outgrown their digs.

Councilman Gary Monahan, now the mayor, appealed the decision,

citing the church’s need for more space and its effect on those who

live near the Orange Avenue sanctuary and had to deal with the lack

of parking in the area. Monahan gained the favor of the City Council,

and Celek and his colleagues were able to move forward with their

plans at the Newport Boulevard site.

After the church moved, the controversy continued. The church is

selling its residential property to the Olson Co., which developed a

single-family housing project for it. Because of planning staff

members’ and neighborhood opposition, the Seal Beach development

company dropped one home and added open space. In April, the Planning

Commission approved the revised project, but some residents are still

not satisfied.

At a City Council meeting in June, resident Gary Brown said he’d

collected 22 signatures from neighbors objecting to the density of

the project. He requested the council decrease density levels allowed

by the city’s general plan, alluding to a relationship between

high-density development and illegal drugs.

While many of these expansion plans have provoked controversy in

their neighborhoods, at least one pastor said he has an easier time

dealing with it than he had in the past.

“Back in the late 1970s and 1980s, when we had a major building

program here, I tended to take the neighborhood opposition

personally,” Huffman said. “This time I don’t, because I’ve

discovered this is the way it is in every community in the U.S. when

a church discusses any kind of alteration of its physical facility.”

* DEIRDRE NEWMAN covers Costa Mesa. She may be reached at (949)

574-4221 or by e-mail at [email protected].