RELIGION / JOHN DART : New Church on Block in a Fight

“It blows me away,” said Los Angeles Zoning Administrator Jon Perica. “You’d think it was a nuclear power plant or a six-story building--not a church.”

Perica was talking about the neighborhood objections that often arise when religious congregations apply to the city Planning Department for permits to build new facilities.

“Churches and other houses of worship always elicit the biggest amount of complaints,” Perica said. Among the Planning Department’s three zoning administrators for the San Fernando Valley, Perica said he has handled most of the religious cases lately.

“My lot in life, whatever the reason, is perhaps to become a lightning rod,” he said ruefully in an interview.

In a highly controversial case, Perica recently granted a permit to a West Hills church, but the decision is expected to be appealed by well-organized neighbors. A contentious hearing in March on the church’s application for a conditional-use permit set a city record for length by lasting seven hours, Perica said.

“A long hearing for us is two hours,” he said.

It is not entirely clear, in that case and in others, Perica said, why the so-called NIMBY (“not in my back yard”) syndrome occurs so intensely when houses of worship are involved, since neighbors almost invariably cite increased traffic, project size and other non-religious concerns as the issues.

“The irony I find is that most people at those hearings attend temples and churches that they drive to,” Perica said. “Somebody else has to put up with the impact they make on those neighborhoods.”

Perica ruled July 17 that the 400-member West Valley Christian Church may build a school and church complex on a five-acre lot it purchased in West Hills for $2.2 million in 1985. He attached 31 conditions, including limiting day school enrollment to 500 students and church membership to 550 people and banning rental of space to outside groups.

The triangular site is at the corner of Roscoe Boulevard and Woodlake Avenue, with Jonathan Street running behind it. The one house on the lot is being rented by a church member.

The Rev. Glenn Kirby, whose congregation now meets at the former Haynes Street School in West Hills, said that the church has spent about $24,000 on traffic consultation reports and has met with neighborhood representatives twice after the March hearing. “We think we will be good neighbors,” he said. “We’ve not had complaints about us in the past.”

However, leaders of the West Hills Neighborhood Assn. said this week they will appeal the decision.

“It’s a very large project for a very small area,” said Barbara Kay, coordinator for the homeowner association. “We’d be fighting any development of that size.”

She said the neighborhood association has sent more than 1,600 signatures on petitions against the project to Perica and has mailed letters to all City Council members and other city officials.

Neighbors are asking that an environmental impact report be done. “We want to know how this is going to affect us,” she said.

Kay said that “it’s a little hard to oppose anything having to do with religion.” She said her family has been active in West Hills’ Temple Solael in the past and still goes there on occasion.

Another organizer, Charlene Rothstein of West Hills, also found the religious factor personally troublesome. Raised as a Christian and married to a Jewish man, Rothstein said she consulted with an elder at Grace Community Church and left assured that raising objections about the church was still the right thing to do.

“It’s not a religious issue for about 98% of the people I’ve come into contact with,” she said.

Rothstein said that she was surprised that Perica’s decision didn’t add more conditions to the building permit. “The traffic will be unbelievable,” she said.

“I felt the decision was very biased in favor of the church and that all our work was overlooked,” she said.

Describing himself as an occasional churchgoer at best, Perica said that his ruling requires another study aimed at lessening traffic on Jonathan Street and a review of the permit before the church starts its second building phase. The first phase, a school-gymnasium building that will house worship services, will be followed after five years by construction of a two-story building containing a 745-seat sanctuary.

The appeal, which must be filed by Aug. 3, would go before the Board of Zoning Appeals, the planning committee of the City Council, and eventually the City Council and the mayor. “It’s probably a six-month process,” Perica said.

“I’m surprised by the reactions,” the zoning administrator said. “This church, by its size, is less intensive than other churches we’ve approved in the city,” he said.

The strength of the opposition undoubtedly derives in part from the organizational skills of West Hills residents, Perica said. About three years ago, he said, very few complaints were brought against a sectarian Filipino church, Iglesia ni Cristo, in Panorama City. “Few homes were really close to it, it’s a blue-collar area and there were no homeowner activists speaking against it,” Perica said.

Perhaps just as important, all parties in the West Hills dispute point to a lack of early discussions about the proposed new church and school complex. “A certain amount of hostility came from people who heard about it rather late,” Rothstein said. “The church said, ‘We want to be a good neighbor,’ but they didn’t make the kind of decisions that showed that.”

Asked about pre-hearing discussions, the pastor said, “I personally went to a large portion of the neighbors myself, but, boy, it takes a lot of time.”

Unsure whether the controversy could have been avoided even with more communication, Kirby added: “There is always the fear that you’re going to give people so much information that they may use it against you.”

Nevertheless, the advice from Perica was that churches, and other religious congregations nearing their dream of building a new religious home, become more sophisticated in securing community support.

“People proposing church projects are going to have to spend more time prior to the public hearing in order to anticipate the concerns of the neighbors,” the city official said. “Churches are no longer immune from having to justify their presence in a community.”