Pastors Sing Praises of Industrial Park Churches : Religion: Fledgling congregations find the sites ideal for services, easy on the budget.

Like many new churches, Canyon Family Worship Center is long on good intentions but short on cash.

Pastor Gary Martin started the church five years ago, holding services in a hotel conference room every Sunday. When the congregation outgrew that arrangement, Martin began looking for a building to buy or lease.

“I must have looked at every building in a five-mile radius,” he said.

But without the financial backing of a major religious organization, the independent church found traditional settings unaffordable.

Martin’s solution was to lease space in an industrial park.

“For us, this was the route to go,” he said.

Low rents, facilities with room to grow, and virtually no competition for parking on Sunday mornings make industrial and business parks attractive to fledgling congregations. In cities across Orange County, churches are leasing or buying warehouses and buildings designed for manufacturing and other light industry at rates far below what churches in residential areas pay.

Industrial parks are particularly appealing in South County and other growing areas. Developers have abandoned the earlier practice of setting aside land for churches to attract home buyers, forcing new congregations to be creative in their search for a place to worship.

“There’s vacant land (in industrial parks), it’s cheap and there’s a lot of space,” said Phillip Schwartze, a San Juan Capistrano real estate consultant who has helped several churches lease or buy industrial space.

Schwartze said churches and light industry have proved to be compatible, in large part because they operate on different schedules and have different peak use times.

Schwartze, a former planner for the city of Anaheim, said allowing churches in industrial and business parks can be beneficial to all parties. When a church leases space in an industrial park, there is one less business using up parking spots and clogging streets in and around the facility during regular business hours.

In fact, several city planners say when looked at as a land-use issue, churches actually fit better in industrial and business zones than residential and retail areas.

“A church, in terms of operating characteristics, is more like a business,” said Mike Bouvier, planning and building director for the city of Westminster. “You have large groups of people coming at the same time and leaving at the same time.”

Most churches in Westminster are in or near residential areas, Bouvier said, and invariably there are complaints from residents about parking and noise.

“We only have a few in industrial zones, and we haven’t had any complaints regarding those,” he said.

In Irvine during the past 18 months, all 12 applications to operate a new church in that city were for industrial zones.

Still, many cities prefer that churches stay out of industrial parks, fearing they will deter other tax-generating tenants. They also fear that churches, which are exempt from property taxes, will erode the property tax base. Garden Grove, for instance, has banned churches from industrial zones.

“It is hard enough to find ways to keep our tax base healthy,” said Millie Summerlin, Garden Grove’s planning services manager. “If large amounts of commercial space are converted to church use, it harms our ability to support community services.”

Yorba Linda recently grappled with that issue when New Hope Church sought permission to lease a building in Savi Ranch, a city-planned industrial and research and development center.

The Planning Commission rejected New Hope’s application after considering the financial impact the church would have. One commissioner questioned whether the city should include churches “within the premiere industrially planned community in the city.”

The City Council eventually overturned the commission’s decision, but only after New Hope agreed only to lease and not purchase a building in Savi Ranch.

At the Canyon Family Worship Center, which is on La Palma Avenue east of Yorba Linda Boulevard, the flat-roofed, concrete and glass building that houses the congregation has nothing in common with the more traditional houses of worship, with their bell towers and stained-glass windows.

The difference, Martin said, can be difficult to accept for those with strong traditional church backgrounds, but it is actually an advantage in attracting what Martin calls “the unchurched.”

“A lot of people find it easier to walk in here than to go to traditional-looking churches,” Martin said. “I guess it is less intimidating here.”

Kathy Swearingen, who has attended Canyon Family for a year, said once she is inside, she forgets the church is located in an industrial park.

“If it has what it needs to be a church--the spirit and the people--it does not matter where it is located,” Swearingen said.

Down the street from Canyon Family, in a similar building, is Canyon Friends Church.

When Pastor Larry Mendenhall began holding services in the building three years ago, the church was one of the first in Yorba Linda to locate in the light-industrial zone east of the city.

Now that area has become an unofficial church row, with three other congregations leasing space in a two-mile stretch.

New churches “really don’t have much of a choice” but to consider industrial parks, Mendenhall said. “Developers didn’t leave land open for us,” he said.

Mendenhall figures his congregation saves about $6,000 a month by leasing a 10,000-square-foot facility in an industrial area rather than in a residential or retail zone.

Both Martin and Mendenhall said they have been so pleased with their current facilities that when their leases expire in the next two to three years, each has the same plan: to purchase their own industrial parks.

“Being in this kind of building might be difficult for those who envision church as a place,” Martin said. “But we see the church as people.”

Times staff writer Anna Cekola contributed to this report.