Study Ordered Before St. Vibiana’s Can Be Razed

Dealing a defeat to Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, a Superior Court judge ruled Wednesday that the Roman Catholic Archdiocese must conduct an environmental study before it can demolish any part of the landmark St. Vibiana’s Cathedral.

In issuing a preliminary injunction blocking further demolition, Judge Robert H. O’Brien chastised the archdiocese for starting to raze the church’s Spanish baroque bell tower June 1 without following proper procedure.

The archdiocese “simply wants to handle the situation on its own terms and within its own time frame,” he wrote. “In approaching the situation in this manner, it then inevitably runs headlong into the applicable civil legal requirements.”

The Los Angeles Conservancy sought the injunction as part of its campaign to persuade Mahony to incorporate the old church into his plans for a new cathedral on the site. Kathryn Welch Howe, president of the preservationist organization, described O’Brien’s ruling as “a full vindication of our position,” but she said she hoped that the dispute over the cathedral’s fate could be settled without going to a full trial.

A spokesman for Mahony denounced the decision as “an indignity and a most unfortunate blow to religious liberty.”

However, the archdiocese announced that it was “hopeful” that other expected actions in the City Council and state Legislature would allow quick demolition of the 120-year-old cathedral at 2nd and Main streets and construction of a $50-million replacement. Mahony has warned that he will move the project out of downtown, and even out of the city, if legal delays continue and the price of adjacent land remains unaffordable. Alarming city leaders who see the cathedral as critical to the revitalization of downtown, the cardinal set a July 15 deadline for his decision.

The judge’s eight-page ruling emphasized that the archdiocese must comply with all state regulations protecting state and city landmarks. O’Brien discounted claims from the archdiocese and the city that a 3.6 magnitude earthquake May 23 dramatically worsened previous seismic cracking. They argued that the cracks created an emergency that exempted them from performing the environmental review usually required for razing a landmark.

The archdiocese also contended that its constitutional guarantee to free exercise of religion should override any landmark protection law.

But O’Brien disagreed. The public is adequately protected from danger by the cathedral’s current closure and boarding up, the judge wrote, and any exemption from the California Environmental Quality Act would need a very strong justification. “That legal justification has not been shown,” he said.

O’Brien clearly came down on the side of the conservancy in ruling that a demolition permit was needed for the bell tower job. The archdiocese had contended that a permit was not required when it began dismantling the tower June 1. But city inspectors and a previous judge in the case cited the need for a permit and stopped the work that same day. Church officials now concede the point and Tuesday applied for a permit to demolish the entire cathedral, according to Brother Hilarion O’Connor, archdiocese construction director.

The full effect of O’Brien’s ruling on the cathedral project and Mahony’s July 15 deadline was unclear Wednesday. Even as the archdiocese was ordered to perform an environmental impact report, the City Council was moving to take St. Vibiana’s off the city’s landmark list.

In a preliminary action Tuesday, the council voted 13-1 to strip St. Vibiana’s of its special status, granted in 1963.

“De-landmarking” the cathedral would require some environmental review. But city officials suggest that such a study would last only a few weeks compared to the six months or so it would take to comply with state rules if St. Vibiana’s remains a landmark.

Preservationists argue that the city has nothing to gain by revoking the landmark listing, saying that process would require a review that is just as lengthy as the study to demolish a landmark.

During a news conference at their 7th Street headquarters, officials of the Los Angeles Conservancy praised the judge’s decision.

“The archdiocese’s case was built on a house of cards,” said conservancy attorney Jack H. Rubens. “Fortunately it was that house of cards that came crashing down today instead of St. Vibiana’s Cathedral.”

An environmental impact report must offer alternatives to the planned project, including possible ways to retain all or part of the old cathedral in a new church complex, he said. Plus, the study will require any plans to be distributed for public comment, he added.

In a letter last week to the cardinal, the conservancy acknowledged that all of the existing cathedral might not be salvageable, but asked him to delay demolition until his recently chosen architect, Jose Rafael Moneo, draws plans. Moneo and conservancy leaders met last week and conservancy president Howe said she hopes for more meetings with the archdiocese.

“We’ve always said the best way to resolve these issues was around a conference table, not in a courtroom,” she told reporters.

Archdiocese spokesman Father Gregory Coiro released a strongly worded statement on behalf of what he described as “the Catholic community.” He said the ruling usurps authority “granted by the grace of God” to the cardinal, it said.

O’Malley Miller, one of the archdiocese’s attorneys, said he was disappointed by the judge’s ruling but not surprised because O’Brien had expressed some skepticism about the archdiocese’s case during court hearings. Miller said it was too soon to say whether the ruling would be appealed.

Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Commission voted Wednesday not to strip the church from the municipal list of landmarks. The commission’s 4-0 vote was taken mainly as a technical matter, knowing that the council is expected to again vote overwhelmingly next week to “de-landmark” St. Vibiana’s.

At the commission meeting, only Vice President Thomas Hunter Russell spoke out strongly against demolition Wednesday and urged that no action be taken. “They are going to slip the dagger into St. Vibiana’s,” Russell said of the City Council. “But I’m not going to be part of it.”

He suggested that Mahony’s warning that he may move the cathedral amounted to “blackmail.” O’Connor strongly disagreed with that.

Mindful that the City Council probably will override its vote, the cultural heritage panel decided to maintain its past policy that a building should be taken off the monuments list only if its original inclusion was based on erroneous information.

The City Council does not have such a policy and can take the earthquake-damaged cathedral off the landmark list after an environmental review, which the Community Redevelopment Agency has been instructed to prepare.