No Frills for the Flock : Religion: Churches find the price is right and the space abundant in non-traditional setting of east Camarillo’s industrial area.

The Camarillo Jubilee Church doesn’t have towers, minarets or steeples that reach toward the heavens.

From all outward appearances, the church looks more like a warehouse or an office complex for a high-tech company--hard, angular lines, tinted windows and well-tended lawns.

But aside from the lack of some heavenly accouterments, the evangelical Jubilee Church and three other young religious organizations have found a home in east Camarillo’s manufacturing and industrial area.

Crossroads Community Church, Vineyard Christian Fellowship, Camarillo Jubilee and Jewish Families of Camarillo all lease space in buildings in an area designated as a light-manufacturing zone. The area’s boundaries are Flynn Road to the north, Adolfo Road to the west, Calle Tesoro to the east and Calleguas Creek to the south.

At Camarillo Jubilee, Associate Pastor Joseph Staley said his congregation of about 500 people occupies a building of about 26,000 square feet. Like churches in more traditional buildings, Camarillo Jubilee regularly offers programs and services during weekday evenings and Sundays.

“Our church has always been more about the people who worship here than the building we’re in,” Staley said. “We don’t like spending our money on cosmetic things. With this building, we have plenty of space. Our congregation is comfortable here.”

After years of meeting in a bank’s community conference room and even a pizza parlor, Jubilee officials say their warehouse at 1169 Calle Suerte is the perfect place for their organization.

Architects and planning officials say the churches that have settled into the manufacturing area seek two things: low rent and large amounts of space.

“We refer to them as incubator spaces,” said Robert Burrow, Camarillo’s senior planner. “Most of the organizations that lease spaces in this zone tend to be younger and are still growing.”

Burrow said the Planning Commission only allows the churches to occupy space in the manufacturing zone by special permit. The city issues the churches permits on the condition that they may be forced to relocate if a company using hazardous materials moves in nearby. The permit also places limits on hours of operation and use of parking lots.

Rick Heath, an industrial property specialist for Grubb & Ellis Co., said that rents for warehouses are on average two-thirds cheaper than other commercial or retail space. “Warehouse space leases for about 40 cents a square foot compared to $1.20 a square foot for office space,” he said.

Heath, who has helped locate churches into the city’s manufacturing area, said that prior to this year’s Northridge earthquake a glut of warehouse space was available for particularly low lease rates. The rates have started to climb as quake-rattled industries have begun to relocate to Camarillo from cities closer to the quake’s epicenter.

Pastor Tom Brewer of Crossroads Community Church, 1221 Calle Suerte, said he is no stranger to leading his flock to unconventional locations.

In 1978, Brewer led a congregation that met every Sunday on the sand at Will Rogers State Beach in Santa Monica. After four years of Sundays at the beach, he moved his church to the confines of a YMCA. A short time later he leased a nearby warehouse.

“Our church has a very informal and very comfortable style,” Brewer said. “We’re not the kind of church that needs to create an atmosphere through architecture.”

The newest religious group to move into the manufacturing area is Jewish Families of Camarillo. The group leased 2,310 square feet of space at 1320 Flynn Road. City planning commissioners unanimously approved their occupation of warehouse space at a meeting last month.

Jeri Belzer, a member of Jewish Families’ board of directors, said the organization is eagerly looking forward to occupying the Flynn Road address because the young group has been forced to meet in the homes of its members for the past year.

Still, Belzer said that the new building may serve as an interim site for events and religious meetings planned for Camarillo’s Jewish families.

“We see this as a kind of natural steppingstone,” Belzer said. “We realize that you just can’t go from meeting in someone’s living room to a full-on temple.”