It’s Tangled With Issues--and Headed for Court

“Dear Dale, This is a simple plea for understanding and Christian commitment from one Christian, one church, to another Christian, another church,” began a letter written Feb. 11 by television preacher Gene Scott.

The letter, hand-delivered to the Rev. Dale O. Wolery, associate pastor of the Church of the Open Door in Glendora, continued: “These last few days I have . . . come to the personal conviction that the lawsuits between us are contrary to God’s Word and wrong for both of us regardless of the justification and/or wrongs we both may feel. . . .”

But Scott’s expressed wish for reconciliation was not to be.

Less than a month later, Scott was calling his adversaries liars, hypocrites and “wimpy Bible-thumping fundamentalist penguins in wing-tip shoes.”

If anything, the rancorous and complex legal, financial and political battle between Scott’s Wescott Christian Center and the former owners of the downtown church with its famed neon “Jesus Saves” signs has grown ever more bitter.

And the next chapter will be written in Los Angeles federal bankruptcy court, beginning with a hearing today.

There, a tangle of issues--a possible cloud on the title arising from a suit by a woman who claims that she attended Church of the Open Door evangelistic services as a child, default on payments by Wescott and a petition by the City Council asking permission to declare the site a historic monument--will be examined.

The contentious wrangling has left many wondering who started it--and why.

Wolery says his theory is that Scott wants to back out of the $23-million deal to buy the 72-year-old Hope Street church because he wasn’t able to raise the money for payments on time. By stalling, Scott hopes to force the Church of the Open Door--which in turn is under pressure to pay more than $4.1 million to a Christian university for property it now occupies in Glendora--to renegotiate the Hope Street deal on better terms, stretching payments over many years, Wolery says.

“It’s a sham,” added Joel Klevens, the lawyer representing the Church of the Open Door. “Scott views the courts as his own personal playground.”

But Scott’s supporters fault the Glendora church for the soured transaction. They say its leaders knew there was a hitch to obtaining a clear title to the property and that a lawsuit might be triggered. Now, these critics contend, the Church of the Open Door wants to keep the $6.5 million Wescott has already paid, repossess the site and auction it off for a handsome profit.

As for Scott, he says that from the day he occupied the 4,300-seat auditorium last July 6 his one objective has been crystal clear: To save “the last historic church in the City of the Angels. . . . Over my dead body will a wrecking ball ever hit the front of that church or tear down those signs.”

The flamboyant, cigar-smoking, saxophone-playing minister denies that Wescott had money problems and notes that payments were made on time until “we were innocently victimized by one of their members suing.”

As both sides indulged in a crescendo of acrimonious charges last week, the fate of the landmark building that used to be the Bible Institute of Los Angeles spilled from the courts to City Hall.

Inside, the City Council prepared to debate whether the Italian Renaissance building was worthy of designation as a cultural historical monument. Outside, clean-shaven Wolery stood on the steps, flanked by his lawyer and Open Door Senior Pastor G. Michael Cocoris. Facing a battery of reporters and cameras, Wolery declared:

“I’d rather not have our dirty laundry hung out in front of City Hall. I’m embarrassed by that.”

But, he continued, a proposal by Scott to extend the deadline for paying the $17.5-million balance Wescott owes the Glendora church and the former co-owner, the Biola Hotel, was only a “cynical ploy.”

Scott’s shrewd and convoluted scheme, according to Wolery and Church of the Open Door attorney Klevens, included using political influence to make the site a historical monument in order to thwart the Glendora church’s hopes of reselling the property to commercial developers.

There won’t be any more deals, Wolery adamantly asserted, because Scott is not sincere and cannot be trusted. Foreclosure proceedings against Wescott will go forward in court, he said.

Relations between the two groups appeared to begin amicably enough in December, 1985.

After deciding in 1983 to relocate to the suburbs because of increasing maintenance and parking costs and declining attendance downtown, leaders of the Church of the Open Door sold the church and the adjacent Biola Hotel to a San Francisco developer in 1984 for $22 million. But the deal for the church to be razed for a 33-story office tower fell through at the last minute. Meanwhile, the Church of the Open Door had moved to a 40-acre site in Glendora and owed Azusa Pacific University, the former owner, millions of dollars.

Enter iconoclastic TV preacher Gene Scott.

After papers for the $23-million deal between Wescott and the Church of the Open Door were signed on Jan. 22, 1986, Wescott made payments of interest and principal totaling about $6.6 million until last August.

At first, Cocoris thought there could be fellowship between the two churches.

“We were planning a prayer meeting between the two boards, but before we could do that, Scott started taking potshots at us on TV, so we got skittish,” Cocoris said. “We wised up real quick.”

About that same time in early January of 1986, a woman named Lehua May Garcia started attending the Glendora church and soon applied for membership.

Garcia, 39, says that as a young girl she lived near the historic Hope Street church, where some of the best-known Bible teachers of yesteryear have preached.

But when she returned to the area in 1985 after a long absence, the church she remembered from childhood had been closed. She said she was dismayed and shocked.

Later, she learned that a deed on the downtown property had dedicated it in perpetuity to the teaching of “God’s Holy Word,” which she interpreted to mean that it could not be sold or torn down.

When the church was built in 1914, a prime donor was Lyman Stewart, the first president of Union Oil Co., now Unocal. If the Bible institute property were ever used as anything but a church, the church would revert to Stewart or his heirs, to be held in trust for repayment to the donors or their heirs, according to the deed signed by Stewart.

In 1923, Stewart rescinded that restriction in a new deed.

But Garcia’s suit, filed on Sept. 3, 1986, alleges that there is doubt that the Hope Street building could ever be legally sold or that Stewart had a right to revise the deed.

Church of the Open Door leaders say, however, that there is doubt about Garcia’s sincerity as well as the merits of her suit. In short, they say, the whole thing was a “put-up job” rigged by Scott to force easier terms for the sale.

The same day Garcia’s suit was filed, attorney Klevens notes, Wescott filed to rescind the sale and stopped further payments. On Sept. 4, the next day, Wescott Christian Center applied to the Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Board for the historical monument designation. If approved, it would prevent the site from being commercially developed for at least one year.

Leaders of the Church of the Open Door pointed out that Scott had previously signed a release holding their church harmless in case of any suit related to terms of title and religious trust. So they went to court to recover their property.

But there is more:

According to a deposition taken by Klevens on March 3 and 4, Garcia has various ties to Scott’s organizations. Garcia admitted under oath that she had been a volunteer in Scott’s television ministry since 1984 and that her daughter is married to Larry Dudley, a Scott-organization employee. Their wedding license shows that Scott’s father, a minister on the Wescott staff, performed the ceremony on Sept. 27, 1984.

Originally, according to her deposition, Garcia sought out Edward L. Masry, who is an attorney for Scott and Wescott’s chief financial officer, for legal advice about her suit. He in turn recommended several lawyers, including her attorney now, Jennifer L. King.

By March 9, it seemed Scott had run out of maneuvering room. Efforts to stop the foreclosure had failed in three courts--including the California Supreme Court--and the Hope Street church was scheduled to go on the auction block the next day. The Glendora church had a buyer, Dennis Wong of Dean Witter Co., New York, waiting in the wings.

But Scott attorney Masry played his trump cards.

Masry had Wescott transfer ownership of 550 Hope St. to a new corporation, headed by himself and two associates, called the Hope Street Building Co. That entity immediately declared bankruptcy under Chapter 11 of the federal bankruptcy laws.

For the time being, the maneuver effectively foiled foreclosure.

The following day, City Councilman Gilbert Lindsay proposed that the church be declared a monument. The council’s subsequent request to the bankruptcy court for permission to take that action temporarily stopped any demolition on the site.

As the court begins its adjudication at a hearing today, both sides are digging in for what may be a long, long fight.

“I feel the Lord will vindicate,” Wolery declared. “We’re not going to renegotiate anything--ever--with Scott.” The Glendora church will go all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary to either regain the property or get the $17.5 million, Wolery vowed.

Scott says it isn’t lack of money that’s keeping him from forking over.

There seems to be evidence that is true.

In 1985, Wescott Christian Center purchased a $2-million, 13-bedroom, eight-bath mansion in Pasadena, near the old Huntington-Sheraton Hotel, where Scott lives and maintains a private museum for his valuable stamp collection. Last June, the center bought a vacant store building on Wilshire Boulevard assessed at $433,000.

And his corporation, Gene Scott Inc., last year became the co-owner with Christine E. Shaw, Scott’s longtime associate and secretary, of a 13-acre horse ranch in exclusive Bradbury Estates. The property, which includes a 10-room house, is assessed at $1.9 million.

Scott makes no secret of these and other properties that his various entities own.

In fact, last Sunday morning he told the audience of several thousand in the Hope Street church that sales of prints of artworks he has painted had amounted to more than $2.7 million, and that he had put the money into thoroughbred show horses as a tax shelter.

At the same time, Scott is adamant that he will receive no personal advantage by buying the Hope Street building.

“We never needed the church in the first place. . . . I could rent the Shrine Auditorium (every week) for less,” he said.

“Our interest was to save it (the church) and maintain it for the glory of God.

“We’re gonna make it,” he bellowed Sunday to thunderous applause and cheering. “Look out, enemies!”