Arts School for Mentally Handicapped Acquires a Church as Its Home

A private, nonprofit arts school for mentally handicapped adults has acquired a south Anaheim church for its permanent home, school officials announced Thursday.

The action came 1 1/2 years after backers of the school, Hope University/UNICO National College, first announced plans to buy the Euclid Street Baptist Church property. The 4-year-old school is regarded by state and national specialists in the field as the only arts school for mentally handicapped people in the United States.

Vincent Lupo, spokesman for the UNICO Foundation Inc., a national service organization and the school’s chief sponsor, said title to the property was recorded Wednesday and the school can move in by early October.

With an enrollment of 35 students, Hope/UNICO is now housed in a tiny storefront in west Anaheim. School director Doris Walker said classes have been held “on an informal basis” for several weeks at the new site.

“We just can’t wait to move in. It’s been a very long wait for us, but the dream, at long last, is coming true for us,” said Walker, 62, an Anaheim teacher who formed the nationally known Hi Hopes troupe of singers and musicians in 1972.

UNICO Foundation Inc. bought the church property for $1.1 million, Lupo said.

Based in Bloomfield, N.J., UNICO is a 65-year-old organization with 7,000 members of Italian-American descent. (UNICO means Unity, Neighborliness, Integrity, Charity and Opportunity.) It sponsors summer camps and other programs for the disadvantaged and handicapped, in addition to mental health-related research at such facilities as Rutgers University and University of Southern Florida.

The church, at 1408 S. Euclid St., includes a 500-seat sanctuary, a large gymnasium and two other buildings with 22 classrooms. The site is across from Loara High School and a convalescent home, but is flanked mostly by homes.

At city hearings in early 1986, many neighborhood residents voiced opposition to the Hope/-UNICO plan. The issue, protesters said, was noise and traffic generated by any school project at the site, including the church’s own preschool and elementary school program.

Hope/UNICO supporters, however, said the real reason for such opposition was the bias against any neighborhood project that involves the mentally handicapped.

The Anaheim City Council approved the Hope/UNICO move, but the conditional-use permit issued in June, 1986, limited enrollment to 100 full-time students.

(Other conditions required the church to shut down its preschool and elementary school operation, and for UNICO to build a six-foot-high wall at the site’s north end adjacent to residences.)

Project backers said neighborhood opposition to the Hope/-UNICO school has subsided, but the move had been delayed until the church was assured of finding a new site.

After the City Council renewed the conditional-use permit June 30, the church’s pastor, the Rev. Bryan Crow, said he was in “final negotiations” for a vacant site in east Anaheim on which to build an expanded complex. The church’s attorney, Gregory Sanders, confirmed on Thursday that talks for a new site are in “an advance stage.”

In its June 30 action, the City Council added a new condition to the Euclid Street site permit: The property owner would be required to defend in court any suit challenging the city’s permit renewal.

But officials for both Hope/UNICO and the church said they expected no such challenges, and city aides this week said they have received no formal complaints since the June 30 action.

Lupo said the church has at least 45 days in which to vacate the Euclid Street property. The church has already moved most offices to a temporary leased facility in east Anaheim, where Sunday services are being held.

Sunday services are also still being held at the Euclid Street sanctuary. Under the agreement with UNICO, the church retains the right to continue Sunday services there.

The Hope/UNICO school, which has a $100,000 operating budget and is supported wholly by private donations, has been housed since 1983 in a $450-a-month rented storefront in a shopping center at Brookhurst Street and Ball Road.

Students in the program are identified as developmentally disabled, a designation that includes the autistic or cerebral palsy-afflicted, as well as the mentally retarded. Classes offer instruction in spelling, arithmetic and household management, as well as music, drama and visual arts.

Most of the current 35 students live with families in Orange and Los Angeles counties. The remainder are in foster or board-and-care homes. Just 11 students are full time (paying tuition of $600 a semester).

The 10-member Hi Hopes troupe tours convalescent homes and social organizations in Southern California, in addition to UNICO-backed visits to universities, conventions, fairs and theme parks in the Midwest, South and East.

The school and the troupe have gained national media attention in recent months from Time magazine and various TV new shows.

Lupo said UNICO hopes to establish similar arts schools in the Midwest and on the East Coast for the “artistically talented” handicapped.

“But right now, all our attention is on Anaheim. We have to first get this new campus off the ground,” he said.