Tenant Relocation Assured : Apartments to Fall in Schuller Project

The Rev. Robert Schuller said Thursday he wants to build a six-story, $15-million family center next door to his Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove and promised to relocate people living in an 84-unit apartment complex that will be razed to make way for the project.

The church purchased the 3.5 acres just west of the cathedral Dec. 31 for about $5 million and spent the following weeks “very secretly determining” how to provide adequate relocation help for the tenants, Schuller said at a press conference. Although relocation assistance is not legally required, Schuller said, he will provide not only cash but help in finding new homes.

He wouldn’t say exactly how much those payments would amount to, saying only that each tenant or family living in the Jetty Circle apartment complex would be dealt with individually and that the church would use the same formula the City of Garden Grove uses for redevelopment projects.

Some tenants in the apartment complex said they aren’t optimistic about finding available and affordable housing in the area, although they admitted numerous problems with the apartments. Said Martha Sabin, a 34-year-old single mother of four: “I’m worried about just how far away relocation would be.” Youth activities, recreation facilities, Bible study classes and the “international mail-handling” department for the church’s televised sermons will be housed in the new granite-and-glass building, Schuller said.

The top floor will be devoted to a new graduate school in communications for young Catholic and Protestant clergy members. Schuller, who started out with a ministry at a drive-in theater and now has a complex featuring the 15-story Tower of Hope office building and an $18-million cathedral with about 10,000 panes of glass, said the school is his latest dream.

“We believe that the priests or pastors of the future have to be taught how to communicate,” said Schuller, who preaches the power of “possibility thinking” to his flock.

Neighboring property owners have expressed concerns about the plans. Last year, when Schuller proposed building the center and a cemetery on church property at the southwest corner of Lewis Street and Chapman Avenue, neighbors showed up at City Council meetings to oppose the plans.

Eventually, Schuller withdrew the plans for the center. But he pressed on with the cemetery proposal and last November the City Council voted 3-2 to allow burials on a triangular parcel of land next to the new family center site.