Rev. Schuller’s Plan for Cemetery, Family Center Irks Neighbors

The Rev. Herman Ridder, coordinating pastor of Garden Grove’s Crystal Cathedral, says he doesn’t understand what all the fuss is about.

Behind the towering cathedral and beside a quiet neighborhood of 25-year-old homes, Ridder and the cathedral’s spiritual leader, television evangelist Robert Schuller, want to construct a cemetery and a six-story “family center,” complete with classrooms, a gym and two racquetball courts.

The new center may be open to area residents as well as parishioners, Ridder said Wednesday, and the cemetery will be a lovely place--a park.

Called a ‘Centerpiece’

“We chose to speak of this as a memorial garden,” he said. “When people think of cemeteries, they have visions of toppling tombstones and shaggy grass and so on. Actually this will be a centerpiece.”

Many of the cathedral’s neighbors disagree. They worry that the proposed $20-million center will bring additional traffic to their increasingly congested streets. And the idea of graves next door appalls them.

“I’m not against religion, and I’m not anti-Schuller or anything like that,” said one of the neighbors, retired security guard Walter Conn. “But I know one thing: I don’t want a cemetery next to my property,”

Conn is one of more than 70 homeowners who have signed petitions protesting the Crystal Cathedral’s plans. He and many of the signers are planning to attend the Garden Grove Planning Commission meeting tonight, where the Crystal Cathedral’s expansion plans are first on the agenda.

But the neighbors are not optimistic about their chances of blocking the cathedral, a powerful economic as well as religious force in Garden Grove. (The church, which on a typical Sunday draws 7,000 people to its services, takes in more than $30 million a year.)

“Our chances are probably very slim,” said Jane Pettit, one of several housewives who walked door-to-door gathering signatures against the plans.

“I mean we’re up against Rev. Schuller. As far as the building and stuff, I’m sure it’s going to be passed,” she said.

Schuller is out of the country and so will not be attending tonight’s meeting, but the homeowners’ chances look slim even without his being there: The Garden Grove planning staff has reviewed the cathedral’s plans and is recommending approval by the Planning Commission and the City Council.

Current zoning will permit the cathedral to build both the cemetery and the classroom building, said Jerry Blum, city planning division manager. Although about 300 parking spaces will be removed when the family center is built, the church will be renting enough parking places at a nearby office building to replace those spaces, the staff report states. Nor should the construction of a 1 1/2-acre cemetery create any problems, Blum said. The planning staff is recommending that it be just a cemetery--that the city specifically bar mortuary services or the construction of a crematorium on the site.

A cemetery alone, Blum said, is “a use which does not create a whole lot of disturbance for the area. . . . It’s almost parklike. There’s not a lot of noise and obviously no fumes or dust--very few environmental effects.”

In the end, Blum said, the issue is more an emotional than an environmental one. “Whether or not you like the use depends on whether or not you feel comfortable with the fact that people are buried next to your backyard,” he said.

Certainly the Crystal Cathedral’s leaders feel comfortable with the idea. Ridder said the small cemetery, with its graves, some “wall niches” for those who are cremated, a small meditation chapel and a pond will provide “an affectional center” for parishioners.

‘An Affectional Center’

“People in history--in Europe, in middle America--have always felt they’d like to be buried near the church,” Ridder said. “If I had an opportunity to be buried close to what I would call an affectional center, I would go for it quickly. It’s a place where I feel comfortable and received, an emotional home for me. And that’s what old cemeteries always were. They weren’t places of ghosts but places of memories.”

Besides, Ridder said, “I can think of a lot worse things than living next to a cemetery--such as bars, drive-in theaters, shopping malls. The cemetery is a very quiet place. And it’s going to be a thing of beauty.”