CYPRESS : Church Has Racetrack as Neighbor

Grace Church isn’t really a church. It’s more like a religious shopping center, complete with entertainment, education and, yes, a place to worship.

In the center of this 12-acre complex, which officially opened its doors this month, is the main sanctuary that seats 1,000 people and eventually is going to be a gymnasium. There is also a wedding chapel with bride’s quarters and an outdoor patio for parties, an elementary school, conference rooms, parking lots and offices.

And anchoring all this is a racetrack.

This miniature mall of the divine is packaged neatly into a snippet of land on the backside of the Los Alamitos Race Course, giving parishioners the distinction of being one of the lone congregations in the country to share its space with jockeys and gamblers--not to mention an 18-hole golf course that serves as its neighbor to the west.

“When people say what is a church doing next to a racetrack . . . well, we like to be where people are,” said senior pastor Mick Ukleja. “You don’t have to win to come here.”

When Long Beach’s Grace Fellowship Church and Grace Community Church in Rossmoor merged in 1987, each had what the other wanted.

Although the Long Beach congregation, formed in 1926, had a church, its membership was slowly declining. At the same time, the Rossmoor church faced a burgeoning membership with no place to hold services.

With that in mind, the two decided to pool their resources and merge, selling off the Long Beach land and shopping for a place to worship closer to their members.

Like countless numbers of churches in Orange County, Grace Church entered the real estate market looking for a cheap piece of property. However, with vacant land becoming more scarce and property values hitting an all-time high, the church struggled.

“We had people for years checking on every possible piece of property. They were turning over every stone,” said pastor Larry Acosta. “Even nomadic people, after a time, like to have a place to call their own.”

In the meantime, Grace Church started holding services and other activities wherever it could--at local schools, movie theaters and even a Soup Exchange restaurant. Shuttle buses would haul parishioners from Sunday school classes to services and back again.

This went on for five years. As the congregation wandered from site to site, it never lost hope that someday it would have a real home and set up a building fund to reach its goal.

During this time, circumstances started to unfold at the Los Alamitos Race Course that would eventually allow the congregation to realize its dreams.

A fight was taking place over the development of the land surrounding the race course, one of the last undeveloped parcels in Cypress. Developers envisioned skyscrapers and business parks, while residents fought and won a scaled-down project.

With their building fund slowly growing from contributions, the church worked out a deal with Lloyd Arnold, owner of the race course, to purchase a slice of property that was not as economically viable for development.

On Dec. 6, just 48 hours after getting the final occupancy permit from the city and just shy of its five-year anniversary, Grace Church officially opened its doors.

“It was an overwhelming feeling. It had been such a long process,” Ukleja said.

Total cost of the project, including land and all the buildings, was $12.8 million. The church, which had to borrow about $2 million, also has plans to develop a second phase sometime in the future.

As part of the deal, the church, which boasts 3,000 members, also bought the Vessel Ranch House, the original home of the race course founders, and converted it into a wedding chapel.

The irony of setting up a church next to a race course is not lost on the pastors who joke about, and even seek, to capitalize on their unusual neighbors. It would be hard, if not impossible to ignore. The green race course bleachers are clearly visible in the back yard of the wedding chapel, and the pounding of the horses as they make their way to the final stretch can be heard from the chapel’s patio. Luckily, the Sunday services end just as the first ponies head to the gates.

In a statement released by the church, entitled “Betsogies and Bibles?” officials try to explain it this way. “The Cypress Golf Course, the Los Alamitos Racetrack and Grace Church? . . . The unlikely but workable scenario that proves that anything is possible when the needs are great enough and a community is willing to work together to make a concept become reality.”