Valley Catholic Complex May Host Mahony’s New St. Vibiana

When Cardinal Roger M. Mahony startled Los Angeles civic leaders by saying he might put the new St. Vibiana’s Cathedral in the San Fernando Valley, or elsewhere outside of downtown, it’s little wonder that speculation quickly focused on an area where many Catholic institutions have clustered--from a high school to a hospital, a historic mission to a cemetery.

Building a new cathedral there--still a longshot, knowledgeable sources say--would create the jewel in the crown of this complex, inviting comparisons as a Catholic counterpart to the cluster of Jewish institutions expanding atop Sepulveda Pass.

Mahony and high diocesan officials will not say where in the Valley they are considering when they talk about alternative cathedral sites. But speculation among local Catholic priests and others zooms in on only one candidate: the earthquake-ravaged campus of Alemany High School, now sitting unused in Mission Hills.

If the cathedral and a planned adjoining conference center were built on the 36-acre Rinaldi Street campus, the spiritual seat of the nation’s most populous Catholic archdiocese would be surrounded by Catholic neighbors:

* Providence Holy Cross Medical Center, a 257-bed hospital sold on May 1 to the Sisters of Providence Health System, just east of the campus on Rinaldi.

* San Fernando Mission, the only Spanish mission inside Los Angeles city limits and the site of Pope John Paul II’s 1987 address to U.S. Catholic bishops.

* San Fernando Mission Cemetery, the only Catholic cemetery in the Valley and the burial grounds for rock ‘n’ roll great Ritchie Valens and actors Chuck Connors, Walter Brennan, William Bendix and William Frawley.

* The new Alemany High School, which now occupies buildings constructed to house Our Lady Queen of Angels High School Seminary, which closed in June 1995. The coed school expects to have an enrollment of 1,500 students in the fall.

* The offices of the diocese’s San Fernando Pastoral Region, located at the east end of Alemany High, seat of an auxiliary bishop responsible for the Valley. The Vatican has yet to fill the vacancy left last month by Bishop Armando X. Ochoa’s assignment to the diocese of El Paso.

Mahony is engaged in a running political and court battle with the Los Angeles Conservancy, which is trying to block his plans to demolish the present St. Vibiana’s downtown so the quake-damaged cathedral can be replaced by a modern structure. The conservancy wants to preserve it as a historic building.

The cardinal also has complained that downtown property owners might demand high prices for adjacent land needed for the cathedral project, which includes the cardinal’s residence and a conference center.

When Mahony first suggested in May that alternate sites might be sought in the Valley or elsewhere, priests in the Valley observed that the concentration of Catholic properties in Mission Hills would provide both religious neighbors and financial advantages.

However, speculation about an alternate site has been muted because the cardinal has said repeatedly that he wants the cathedral to remain downtown if possible, marshaling an array of political and community allies in his battle to tear down the old structure.

The Mission Hills site would be freeway-close--in the middle of a bishop’s miter-shaped triangle formed by the Golden State, San Diego and Simi Valley freeways--and closer to the archdiocese’s seminaries in Camarillo.

But it would stick Mahony and his successors with a considerable commute--about 25 miles by freeway and surface streets--to the archdiocese’s offices. The church headquarters will move in August or September from West 9th Street to a 12-story building on Wilshire Boulevard once owned by Thrifty Drug Co., said Father Gregory Coiro, a spokesman for the cardinal.

“That [commute] would be a question that would have to be asked,” Coiro said.

But speculation that the former Alemany campus might still be in the running arose again recently, when high school administrators applied for a city permit to move permanently to their new home, in what was formerly the seminary.

Alemany at first shared facilities with the seminarians, then took it over when Mahony shut down the seminary a year ago.

A public hearing by city planners on Alemany’s permanent move and proposed additional buildings will be held July 22 at the Sherman Oaks Women’s Club. That same day, the cardinal has said he will announce a decision on whether to build a cathedral complex where the quake-damaged St. Vibiana’s Cathedral now sits or move out of downtown.

Alemany administrators want to build a permanent gymnasium to replace the temporary structure and construct a road from Rinaldi Street to the campus, Vice Principal Robert Gebauer said Friday. During the school year that ended in June, parents either drove onto the campus from San Fernando Mission Road or dropped off students on Rinaldi--about 300 yards north of the high school.

City Planner Larry Friedman, who will conduct the July 22 hearing, said Alemany also eventually wants to erect an additional building for seven classrooms, an open-air locker pavilion and snack bar.

After hearing from neighboring property owners, he will submit a report to the Los Angeles Planning Commission at its Aug. 22 meeting, Friedman said, adding that he has received no comments from neighbors to date.

If the Alemany High School expansion is approved, the neighboring San Fernando Mission Cemetery will lose some of its undeveloped acreage, said cemetery manager Michael A. Wesner. “Our burial ground is diminishing at a rapid rate,” Wesner said.

The school’s temporary gymnasium and a proposed road and parking area would eat into the cemetery’s 20 to 30 acres of unused grounds, most of which is now leased to a farmer. The cemetery, which opened in 1952, has developed 65 acres.

The cemetery, mission and hospital are all still dealing with damage done by the Northridge earthquake of 1994.

Cemetery officials are awaiting an engineering decision on whether a tall, concrete canopy over an outdoor altar must be torn down because of cracks in the structure caused by the temblor.

The mission’s Convento building, a familiar sight with its distinctive arches facing San Fernando Mission Boulevard, is being repaired, although the rest of the mission grounds remains open to tourists. The mission is still a functioning church.

Providence Holy Cross Medical Center has one administrative building scheduled for demolition, but the rest of the hospital survived the earthquake well, a spokeswoman said. The original main structure, damaged by the 1971 Sylmar quake, was replaced by a new building in 1977, she said.