Church plans scaled back

Just weeks after dozens of unhappy neighbors protested the proposed expansion of Christ Lutheran Church & School in Costa Mesa, an amicable compromise has been reached.

The City Council voted unanimously Tuesday night, with Councilwoman Katrina Foley absent, to grant the church permission to build a new two-story administration building, a cafe and a fireside lounge on its campus.

The church’s original plan, however, included demolishing a house it purchased at 2199 Raleigh Ave., adjacent to the campus, to turn into an empty, landscaped space. Many neighbors hated the idea of the demolition, saying it would detract from the neighborhood’s residential character and create more noise.

But the church didn’t like the plan, either.

A church pastor lives in the house, and the church asked to level it only to meet city requirements that prevent developers from covering too much of their land with buildings.

“It was mutually beneficial to us to retain that house at Raleigh,” said Mike Gibson, pastor of Christ Lutheran Senior.

Heeding a council suggestion, the church reached out to neighbors and held a community meeting. After speaking with about 30 nearby homeowners, the church agreed to reduce the project’s scope so it could leave the house in place and avoid violating city codes.

“I do believe that in the spirit of compromise and cooperation the church has made many strides to meet neighbors concerns,” said the project’s architect, Terry Jacobson.

Christ Lutheran agreed to scale back its construction by not adding a second-story youth loft and by decreasing the size of the fireside lounge, making it unnecessary to tear down the house.

The homeowner living next to the 2199 Raleigh Ave. property, Jerry Simpson, was the most vocal critic of the proposal before it was amended. He applauded the church for collaborating with the neighborhood.

“I’m very pleased. This turned out better than I could have expected,” Simpson said after the council vote.

The church also agreed to raise the wall separating the homes on Raleigh Avenue from the campus and to eventually block parents from exiting the campus into the neighborhood through the back gate, forcing them instead to go through the front gate on Victoria Street to prevent what many residents considered dangerous amounts of speeding traffic.

In other news, youth sports organizations and schools will not be taxed on profits earned from operating fireworks booths this year.

Additionally, the cap on fines for fireworks citations will not be raised from $500 to $1,000 — both proposals made by Mayor Pro Tem Wendy Leece earlier this year — but law enforcement has identified a short list of “hot spots” for illegal fireworks use that will be targeted with automated phone calls prior to the Fourth of July.

In the revised proposal that Leece brought to the council Tuesday night, she nixed the idea of charging the youth organizations to cover the city’s roughly $30,000 cost for extra holiday enforcement during the holiday.

Leece said the tax would have been a tough sell and that the logistics would have been difficult to work out with summer soon approaching.

In exchange for rescinding the added fine, forgoing tax talks and allowing 40 fireworks booths in the city instead of 32, Leece’s revised proposal won the support of Councilman Gary Monahan and passed, 3-1, with Councilman Eric Bever voting against. Leece said that she was satisfied with the altered version.

“It wasn’t worth it to bring that much anger,” she said of the tax proposal. “It wasn’t the hill to die on.”

Along with the automated calls, the council directive will change the citation process from criminal citations to administrative citations.

Leece also hopes that police and fire teams will be more aggressive this year in targeting violators and in issuing more citations to send the message that illegal fireworks won’t be tolerated.

Also, city officials announced that Someone Cares Soup Kitchen’s proposal to put a portable tutoring facility behind its Westside building has been withdrawn.

The charity said it wanted the separate building for tutoring so it wouldn’t have to give kids homework help in the main dining hall, which can be noisy.

The reason for the withdrawal was not clear.

Reporter ALAN BLANK may be reached at (714) 966-4623 or at [email protected].