Costa Mesa Church Drops Plan for Palomar Mountain Resort

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

Calvary Chapel 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 telling 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.

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 Thursday, but county planners received a letter last week from a Santa Ana architect, Robert Savage, withdrawing the application for the Palomar Mountain project.

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.

Savage, who has represented the Orange County church, 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.