Residents Upset About Church’s Expansion Plan

Plans by a fast-growing Quaker church to build a sanctuary as big as the Crystal Cathedral could ruin one of the city’s last rural neighborhoods, dozens of residents told officials Wednesday night.

Many of the more than 60 people at the meeting own homes in a wooded glen where, since 1994, Yorba Linda Friends Church has bought up land and demolished houses for a proposed $15-million sanctuary and parking lot behind its current facilities.

“The area around the church, the reservoir hill area, is very much a treasured gem of Yorba Linda. It is a semi-rural area; hawks, birds of prey, still roam there,” Yorba Linda resident Rhys Morgan said. “I think the changes proposed are going to be disruptive, not just to the area but to our way of life.”

Leaders of the church, the fastest-growing Quaker congregation in the country, say they have no choice but to expand. The church’s existing sanctuary on 11 acres between Laurel View Drive and Yorba Linda Boulevard seats 750. Average weekend attendance has exploded from 256 in 1985 to more than 3,500 today, they said.

“The people just keep coming. The people are coming, and we’re getting full. God is really blessing us. We just can’t hardly make the facility work anymore,” church business administrator Tom Babnick said.

The church proposal calls for building a 70,000-square-foot, 2,862-seat sanctuary and a 6-acre parking lot. The proposal also includes plans for a 30,000-square-foot classroom and office building and for expanding a private grade school and kindergarten.

Babnick said church leaders hope to break ground on the project by 1999 and also plan to build a new horse trail in the neighborhood and erect a thick wall to separate the parking lot from residential streets.

“You’ll never see the parking lot. I mean no one will ever know what’s on the other side of that wall,” Babnick said.

The meeting Wednesday night was called by the City Council to help shape an environmental impact report on the project.

At the meeting, residents complained that the church’s plans would bring noise, traffic and pollution and overwhelm quiet homes with a vast parking lot.

“Five days a week, most of us now work. Saturdays and Sundays we want quiet. That’s not going to happen with this church going in,” resident Kris Pilmer said.

The project is subject to approval by the planning commission and City Council. But church officials have not waited to put their plans in motion.

During the past three years, the church has spent more than $4 million to buy 10 homes on 7 acres near their existing sanctuary.

The neighborhood affected by the church expansion is a tranquil enclave of 1940s-era homes just a block off busy Yorba Linda Boulevard. It is so covered with trees and shrubbery that it feels like a world from a more tranquil time. Many homeowners had lived there since the houses were built.

This spring, about half a dozen neighbors began writing letters and organizing a petition drive, and in recent weeks, dozens have met with council members to voice opposition.