Historic Churches Win Exemption : Preservation: Council votes to remove religious buildings from regulations governing alterations to designated landmarks.

City Council members voted Tuesday to exempt an Armenian Orthodox church and two other congregations from a historic preservation ordinance which, church officials maintained, curtailed religious freedoms.

In a marathon hearing Tuesday night, more than 150 church supporters and preservation advocates packed City Hall to debate the merits of preserving older buildings intact versus modifying them to serve present-day needs.

After four hours of testimony, the council voted 4-0, with Sheldon Baker abstaining, to create a new ordinance that exempts all churches in the city from historic regulations.

The new law, expected to be adopted next year, would remove St. Mary’s Armenian Apostolic Church, Holy Family Catholic Church and the First Baptist Church of Glendale from a list of 34 protected historic sites in Glendale. Leaders and members of all three had argued that special building restrictions should not apply to religious buildings.

“If a church’s congregation is growing and they need to expand, it just doesn’t make sense to me that the decision as to whether they can do that should rest with someone outside the church,” Councilman Larry Zarian said before the vote was cast.

St. Mary’s purchased its 1926 neoclassical-style building at 500 S. Central Ave. in 1985, just months before the city’s Historic Preservation Ordinance was adopted. Church officials have said they might not have bought the building if they had known a law would be adopted requiring property owners to obtain approval of the city’s Historic Preservation Commission for all construction projects.

With a congregation of more than 1,000, St. Mary’s is one of the most popular Armenian Orthodox churches in the Los Angeles area. The debate over its right to make religiously oriented changes to the building has galvanized the Armenian community in Glendale, estimated at more than 40,000 residents.

“Who wants to end up with a building you can’t use for the purpose you bought it?” Archbishop Datev Sarkissian of St. Mary’s told the council. Sarkissian warned that rejecting the church’s request to be freed from the ordinance could open up a rift between the Armenian community and city government.

“If you want to make our church a museum, we will not accept that,” he said.

Members of the Glendale Historical Society, who had argued that exempting the churches could set a precedent for all owners of historic sites to ask for similar treatment, were dismayed by the council’s decision. Preservation advocate Andrea Humberger said the move “furthers a single property owner’s interest, while undermining the city’s historic preservation policy.”