Chapman May Move if It Can’t Construct Facility : College Plays Hard Ball in Building Feud

Chapman College’s battle for the right to construct a $10-million classroom building on its campus has escalated to the point that President G. T. (Buck) Smith is threatening to remove the 125-year-old private institution from the City of Orange.

“We have other communities that are interested in having a first-rate college with a national reputation in their community,” Smith said in a recent interview. “We’d like to be in Orange, but if it interferes with our viability as a high-quality college, then we may have to go somewhere else.”

Chapman is an independently owned, 2,100-student, four-year college affiliated with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). The college was founded in Woodland in 1861, moved to Los Angeles around the turn of the century, then moved again to Orange in 1954.

Smith threatened to move the college after the City of Orange Planning Commission unexpectedly reversed itself on Oct. 6 and rejected the college’s environmental impact report for the proposed building. The commission had approved the environmental report Sept. 3.

Not Enough Alternatives

Assistant City Planner Joan Wolff said the commission reversed itself because commissioners wanted more information. “They felt they hadn’t reviewed a sufficient number of alternatives to approve what they had been asked to approve,” Wolff said.

The action forces the college to again revise a construction timetable for the proposed four-story Learning Center, planned for the eastern part of the campus, near Center Street.

The college had hoped to have ground-breaking last January, but that hope evaporated after residents near the college began to protest about parking congestion and the building’s design. Construction could not begin until spring, 1987, at the earliest, Smith said.

The Learning Center would house all of the college’s computer-related programs, including the School of Business and Management--the largest academic program at the college. It would also include a 150-seat Interfaith Chapel.

Funding has been assured by private donations, Smith said. “But you can imagine how the donors feel about these delays in getting the building under construction,” he added.

63-Foot-Tall Building

The college’s plans call for a 63-foot-tall structure although present zoning restrictions limit heights to 30 feet in the residential area around the college. The school’s science building is also 63 feet tall.

“This new building wouldn’t be any taller than our science building, which has been there since 1968,” Smith said. “We’ve already taken care of the parking spaces, but now the residents say they don’t want the parking area to be where we bought more land. So we’re being whipsawed.”

But some residents of the Old Towne area of Orange counter that the college is insensitive to the residential area surrounding it. Old Towne borders Chapman College. Roughly bordered by Batavia, Walnut, Cambridge and La Veta streets, Old Towne is an area of early-1900 homes. The planned high-rise college building would detract from the character of Old Towne, some residents have argued.

“We are not anti-development,” said Debbie McLaughlin, a committee chairman for the Old Towne Preservation Assn. “But there are proper places for high-rise buildings, and this isn’t one of them. In the wintertime, some of our residents would be blocked from the sun by 3:30 p.m., and that means turning on the lights and the heat that much earlier. Also, we see this building as a precedent. If the Planning Commission allows this, all the other developers will want high-rises when they seek to build in this area.”

‘Inappropriate’ for Area

Dale Rahn, president of the Old Towne Preservation Assn., said: “We’re not against Chapman College. We’re against this building. Its height and mass are inappropriate for Old Towne. The architectural facade is not in keeping with the aesthetic nature of the Old Towne district. We’d like to have the building either moved (to another site) or modified.”

Smith said in rebuttal: “We have met with the residents and already made changes. We’ve spent more than $200,000 in design costs, and another $800,000 to get land for parking.”

In a letter mailed in September to nearby residents, Smith said: “With five buildings listed on the National Register of Historic Preservation, the college has a primary concern for preserving the character of our community. At the same time, we recognize the need to blend this heritage with the economic and technological realities which are now a part of our everyday lives.”

Some residents, however, have responded that they continue to be unhappy with the proposed building and have vowed to keep pressure on the Planning Commission.

But Smith said the Planning Commission’s unexpected change of heart has already put the college in a Catch-22 situation. Under normal conditions, Smith said, an owner can appeal a Planning Commission action, but “the city attorney has told the college this can’t be appealed because nothing has really happened . . . there is no action to appeal.”

Smith said an appeal may be attempted nonetheless. He added that the college is disappointed at its treatment. “We’re going to reassess our future, as an institution, and and decide if we’re going to reinvest in this campus,” he said.