Orange Council Approves Center at Chapman College

After about three hours of emotional debate, the Orange City Council voted 4 to 0 Tuesday night to approve a controversial classroom building on the Chapman College campus.

Approval of the $10-million Learning Center was made contingent, however, on a residential parking program designed to keep Chapman students from parking on neighborhood streets.

Before the vote was taken, Chapman College President G. T. (Buck) Smith had told the council that the college intended to decrease the height of the proposed building from 64 feet to 53 feet. That, he said, was part of “a compromise we have tried to reach” to meet the city’s concerns and those of neighbors in the Old Towne section of Orange.

But Dale Rahn, president of the Old Towne Preservation Assn., charged that the college was actually making little change in the proposed building and said the compromise was unacceptable to Old Towne residents. Rahn urged the council to require the college to limit the building to 45 feet and to impose strict parking and traffic limits before allowing it to be built.

The dispute over the building has provoked what many consider to be Chapman College’s most serious crisis since the private, four-year college moved to Orange from Los Angeles in 1954. After the Orange Planning Commission unexpectedly rejected the building plans Oct. 6, college president Smith said the institution may consider moving to another city.

The council then told the commission to reconsider the building plans. But the commission voted again Nov. 3 to recommend rejection of the college’s request for a permit for the Learning Center, which would be on Center Street between Sycamore and Palm streets.

Opposition to the center has been spearheaded by the Old Towne group. Rahn has said the proposed center’s “height and mass are inappropriate for Old Towne.” Residents also fear that the building would create more traffic and parking problems in the neighborhood.

The center would house all of the college’s computer-related programs, including the School of Business and Management, which is the college’s largest academic program. A 150-seat interfaith chapel also would be in the proposed building.