Rev. Moody’s Church Announces New Bid to Relocate to Chatsworth

First Baptist Church of Van Nuys, the 10,000-member congregation whose pastor wants to “keep the West Valley from Satan’s grip,” has renewed its attempt to relocate in the Chatsworth area, a church official said Wednesday.

Opposition from affluent Monteria Estates quashed a similar plan last year, but the property now considered by the church lies on both sides of the Simi Valley Freeway between Winnetka and Corbin avenues, north of the exclusive enclave.

The president of Monteria Estates Assn., Ray Mulokas, said Wednesday, “We have no difficulty with it. The location is a lot more apropos than the last one.” The previous site was a 12.5-acre section of Monteria Estates at Devonshire Street and Winnetka Avenue.

The new site, Mulokas added, is in an area already “slated for development, but it doesn’t destroy the character of an established residential neighborhood.”

A spokesman for the church opened a $4.2-million escrow on the 25-acre property Feb. 20 and announced the action to parishioners at the Palm Sunday worship service April 12, said the Rev. Jim Rives, executive associate pastor at First Baptist.

If the plan is approved by the church’s congregation and by city zoning officials, the new church could open as soon as 1989, he said. Its design has not been completed, but it could consist of as many as three connected buildings encompassing a sanctuary, a Sunday school, offices, a day-care center, a small theater and an exercise room. Jogging paths would be laid out on the property and would be open to the public, Rives said.

The move hinges on the sale of the church’s Van Nuys property at 12600 Sherman Way, Rives said. He said church officials are negotiating for sale of 10 acres and a 128,000-square-foot building to First Foursquare Church of Van Nuys and also are talking with private developers.

Rives said the church draws about 2,500 worshipers--many of them West Valley residents--each Sunday.

The church anticipates no neighborhood opposition, Rives said, simply because there is no neighborhood next to the chaparral-dotted, undeveloped site, which is owned by California Federal Savings & Loan Assn.

“There’s nobody to compete with,” he said. “There’s nothing up there.”

Residents of Monteria Estates, a 285-acre subdivision of about 40 expensive homes and ranches at the northern end of Winnetka Avenue, feared the First Baptist relocation to their area would clog their streets with traffic, lower their property values and mar the appearance of their bucolic area.

City Councilman Hal Bernson, who represents the area, took the neighbors’ hostility to heart, and also opposed the church plan. Bernson’s opposition effectively ruined the church’s chances for receiving the conditional-use permit the city would have required for the project. This time around, however, Bernson favors the plan.

“My initial impression is that it seems very possibly to be a suitable location,” he said. “It appears to be a location that can fly.”

An advisory group of Porter Ranch and Chatsworth residents also had no objection to the church’s plan.

“They laid everything out to us and we approved it on a unanimous basis, pending a lot of other information,” said Howard Green, who chaired a meeting of Chatsworth and Porter Ranch residents on the proposal last Thursday. “It’s all very preliminary at this stage.”

“As far as we’re concerned,” said Green, “we never had the feeling that we don’t want a church--as long as it’s in the right place. There’s no development there right now, so people moving in would be free to make their own choice about whether they want to locate there or not.”

About 14 acres of the property lie north of the freeway, and about 11 acres are south of it. The church, which plans to develop only the area north of the freeway, wants to trade a portion of the southern property to the city parks and recreation department for additional, city-owned acreage to the north, Bernson said. The northern and southern portions are joined by an overpass at Corbin Avenue.

The Rev. Jess Moody, pastor of the church, last September wrote in a church newsletter that God told him to lead the congregation to the “Promised Land” of the West San Fernando Valley.

“It is God’s will that our church move to an area of well over 700,000 souls, an area that has no great church to challenge them, win their children, save their families and keep the West Valley from Satan’s grip,”he wrote.

“What a thrill, when you think about it, to be like the children of Israel, moving into the promised land.”