College for Retarded OKd Despite Neighbors’ Protests

Anaheim residents opposing a college for artistically gifted, mentally retarded adults lost their fight Tuesday night to bar the college--the first in the nation--from their neighborhood.

After more than four hours of emotional pleas from both sides, the Anaheim City Council sustained a Planning Commission decision to allow Hope University-UNICO National College to open a campus at what is now the Euclid Street Baptist Church (UNICO in the school’s name stand for Unity, Neighborliness, Integrity, Charity and Opportunity).

The council voted 4 to 1 in favor of the campus, with Councilman Ben Bay dissenting.

At least half of the approximately 300 people at Tuesday’s meeting indicated they supported Hope and the schools now operated by the church. They also turned in petitions with more than 1,600 signatures from throughout the county in support of the college.

Opposing residents had also signed petitions, written letters and repeatedly called city officials arguing against any school in their neighborhood.

The residents said they had become opposed to having a school in their area because of their experience with the Baptist Church’s 8-year-old day care and elementary school.

“The noise has been atrocious, and our neighbors have been complaining for years,” Dorothy Rubin, a resident on Chanticleer Road for 23 years, said before the meeting. The problem will continue, Rubin and others said, if Hope University is allowed to take over the church site.

Hope University, which has 37 students enrolled, now operates out of two rooms at the Brookhurst Shopping Center and once a week in the Trinity United Methodist Church.

The neighbors also expressed fear that the school, because it proposes to have residential apartments, would cause their property values to decrease.

Some officials from the church and Hope University have said the fears are founded in prejudice against the mentally retarded.

Mayor Pro Tem Irv Pickler questioned whether the community reaction would have been as strong had the applicant not been a school for mentally retarded adults.

The church at 1408 S. Euclid St. plans to give UNICO International, an Italian-American service organization, its 2.9 acres for the establishment of Hope University in exchange for 30 to 40 acres in Anaheim Hills, where the church plans to build a new sanctuary and school. College officials said the campus would be the first of its kind in the country.