Palomar Residents Cheer End of Resort Plan

Palomar Mountain residents are celebrating today after learning that an Orange County church has abandoned plans to build a 550-acre religious resort and conference center in a quiet valley atop the mountain.

Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa now plans to build the massive mountain retreat in the Angeles National Forest near Big Bear and Arrowhead lakes.

Cliff and Judy Ellerby, longtime Palomar Mountain residents, live on the edge of Jeff Valley, a scenic area high on Palomar’s slopes where the church planned to build its wilderness resort.

“Everybody’s happy,” Judy Ellerby reported after disseminating the news to the other mountain residents via telephone. “Thank God, it’s finally over.”

The staff at Palomar Observatory, 4 1/2 miles north of the church property, also sent up cheers.

For five years, residents on the mountain have traveled the 60-plus miles down to the county Planning and Environmental Review Board hearings on the Calvary Chapel project, demanding that the county protect them from the influx of hundreds of church members seeking the mountain’s solitude and, in their eyes, ruining the peaceful area. The church would be hosting more visitors at its convention center than the entire population of Palomar Mountain, they argued.

“For once the county (Planning and Land Use Department) was on our side,” Judy Ellerby said. Four months ago, the review board issued an ultimatum to the church to scale down its project--designed to accommodate 679 guests--and to change its design to protect the sensitive environment atop the mountain, or face denial.

The deadline for the church group to submit its new plans was today but county planners received a letter last week from a Santa Ana architect, Robert Savage, formally withdrawing the application for the Palomar Mountain project.

Tom Oberbauer, county representative on the Calvary Chapel application, said the review board would formally accept the church’s withdrawal at its meeting today, without comment or hearing. The only possible glitch would be if Savage’s letter of withdrawal had not been approved by church officials. Allen Haynie, Calvary Chapel’s San Diego-based attorney, is expected to confirm the withdrawal for the county board.

The Rev. Chuck Smith, senior pastor of Calvary Chapel, was away at a retreat Wednesday and unavailable for comment but Pastor L. E. Romaine confirmed that the church trustees had abandoned the rural San Diego County site and were hoping to close escrow this month on San Bernardino County mountain property.

Romaine said he has not seen the Angeles National Forest site “but Pastor Smith and some of the trustees who have been up there are just jubilant about it.” He added that the 552-acre Palomar Mountain property probably will be put up for sale.

Savage, who has represented the Orange County church in its attempts to obtain approval to build the conference center, said that the church had abandoned the Palomar Mountain site “because we felt there was was a much better chance of obtaining the zoning we need” at the San Bernardino County site “and we didn’t feel we were ever going to be able to build what we have in mind” on Palomar Mountain.

When Calvary Chapel first applied for a county permit on Palomar Mountain, they sought to build a retreat with recreational facilities that would accommodate more than 1,000 guests and more than 400 cars.

During the dozens of county hearings, many of the recreational fields and some of the buildings were deleted from the plans, but mountain residents still protested that it was not the place to build a massive church resort that would displace ancient oak groves and natural ponds with swimming pools and parking lots.

Judy Ellerby said mountain residents do not fear the thought of another group coming in with development plans, “because they will have to play by 1990 rules,” and submit plans that meet the county’s resource conservation area requirements, which protect the natural environment and require seismic tests for earthquake faults. When Calvary Chapel first applied for its Palomar Mountain permits, no such safeguards were in effect.