Rustic Area Divided Over Church Plan

Usually, the residents up on Mt. Washington, a scenic and serene neighborhood some 10 minutes’ driving time from City Hall, are welcoming, neighborly and tolerant. There, everybody seems to know everybody else.

“It’s Mayberry RFD,” resident Mike Whaley said, referring to the old Andy Griffith TV program set in rural North Carolina.

In the coming weeks, however, that tradition will be tested as the latest chapter in a controversy unfolds in the hilly community northeast of downtown Los Angeles. A draft of a 1,200-page environmental impact report on a $40-million proposal by a church to expand its headquarters at the site of the old Mt. Washington Hotel is expected to be released for public comment and scrutiny.

Nasty debate is likely over whether the Self-Realization Fellowship can add office space, a museum, classrooms, counseling facilities, underground parking and more housing for “monastics”--the monks and nuns who live at the church’s hilltop headquarters. About half of the church’s 15 buildings will be razed to accommodate the construction, church officials say.

The plan also calls for the remains of the church’s founder, who died in 1952, to be reinterred on the property.

So intense has the battle become in this environmentally conscious community of about 8,000 that some opponents of the church plan don’t speak to some neighbors who belong to the church. Nor do the church members speak to them.

Heated arguments have highlighted recent meetings of the venerable Mt. Washington Assn., prompting some longtime activists to quit the residents group and form a rival organization.

But, as they argue, some church foes are mindful of Mt. Washington’s reputation as a tranquil community.

“This makes my blood boil,” longtime community activist Clare Marter Kenyon said of the church’s plans. “But it doesn’t make you want to bop someone in the nose.”

In the past, residents with different points of view have come together when they believed their rustic neighborhood was threatened. The Mt. Washington Assn. was formed in 1955 by local homeowners who successfully fought a plan for a city dump there.

They were vigilant when a developer sought in the 1980s to build condos in nearby Elyria Canyon. That plan was defeated, and residents were cheered when the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy purchased the canyon, turning the 35-acre parcel of open space into a sanctuary of solitude.

The conservancy also acquired another open parcel, Rainbow Canyon, to preserve it as a park.

Mt. Washington is a place where motorists, negotiating the narrow, winding roads, stop and chat with neighbors out for strolls with their dogs. Longtime resident Jack Smith, the late columnist for The Times, referred to Mt. Washington as a “poor man’s Bel-Air.”

The nondenominational Self-Realization Fellowship, which has 500 centers in 54 countries, has been part of Mt. Washington since 1925 when its founder, Paramanhansa Yogananda, purchased the hotel, which was built in 1909 as a getaway for the Hollywood elite. With its devotion to meditation and spiritual living, the church seemed a good fit for Mt. Washington. Residents appreciated the friendliness of church members and the fact that they didn’t push their religious beliefs on the locals.

And church members enjoyed the quiet surroundings that allowed them to pursue their blend of Eastern and Western philosophies. They refer to the 12 1/2-acre headquarters as the “mother center.”

When a conditional-use permit was granted in 1966 for church expansion, some Mt. Washington folks expressed concerns, but those seemed minor. There was a general outcry in 1988, when the church proposed construction of an office building for its nuns. The church was allowed to build after agreeing to restrict the structure’s size.

At the time, officials of the church volunteered to restrict the number of single-family homes it owned outside its compound, where some of its nuns and monks lived. Area residents had complained that the living arrangements violated single-family zoning regulations.

This time, however, the battle lines have been drawn.

When it became known two years ago that the church would seek a conditional-use permit for more expansion, some environmentalists who were leaders of the homeowners association questioned the project. Among them was the group’s land use chairman, Louis Mraz, who had served as the association’s president.

“Suppose you had a really nice home and you decided to bring in all your relatives and other people and quadruple the size of your home,” Mraz said, recalling his doubts about the project. “It’s always easier to overbuild on land you already own.”

Mraz presented his criticism at an association meeting in January 1998. Then, at a meeting two months later, he got a real surprise. The crowd was twice as large as usual--and filled with supporters of the church. Members of the Self-Realization Fellowship, including many who rented homes from the church, had shown up in force and greatly outnumbered the old-line Mt. Washington homeowners.

In a 54-26 vote, with five abstentions, the association members told the board to remain neutral and said only the membership could take a position on any Self-Realization Fellowship development proposal. Subsequently, the membership voted some Self-Realization Fellowship members onto the board.

For nearly two years, there has been no discussion of the proposal at association meetings.

These developments dumbfounded some longtime Mt. Washington residents, who looked to the association as a leading voice in neighborhood affairs. They eventually formed a group with an unwieldy name, CANDER, to critically analyze the proposal.

CANDER stands for Conditional-use permit of 3880 San Rafael Ave.--Analysis, Negotiation, Dissemination & Enforcement Roundtable.

CANDER supporters say, among other things, that church members have taken over the association and that they should not vote on any church matter because they have a conflict of interest.

“It’s an immoral act by a supposedly moral institution,” CANDER President Dan Wright said of the church takeover of the association.

That, in turn, has upset church members and others, who say the conflict-of-interest argument sounds undemocratic.

“That angers me,” said Mt. Washington Assn. board member Eli Friedler, whose wife is a church member. “That is against what this country stands for. Trying to exclude people associated with a certain religion seems anti-democratic. Talk about a takeover isn’t true.”

The dispute has extended to other areas:

* The Mt. Washington Assn. Web site. It highlights other local issues, such as the proposed Blue Line train through the northeast area, but does not refer to the church project. On the other hand, the church’s annual Halloween celebration, which has turned into a gala “must-attend” community event, gets prominent mention.

* The traffic that might result from moving the remains of church founder Yogananda, who is entombed at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, to Mt. Washington. Church officials say the traffic would be insignificant, but opponents aren’t so sure.

* The impact of the construction, proposed to take place periodically over 30 years, on the hillsides. Church officials say some of the construction will enhance some hillsides that are threatened by erosion. Opponents say the project will cause irreparable damage.

There are mixed emotions at the prospect of supporters and opponents getting together soon, either at forums sponsored by the Mt. Washington Assn., CANDER or elsewhere, to discuss the project.

“CANDER obviously has its point to make, but it’s very negative,” said Anna Carpenter, the association’s first vice president and a 15-year member of the Self-Realization Fellowship. “I really want to have an open forum where everyone can have their say, and I’m trying to keep controversy to a minimum.”

Based on recent interviews with residents on both sides of the dispute, there seems to be some room for compromise.

Longtime Mt. Washington resident and activist Lucille Lemmon, for example, says she has no objections to moving Yogananda’s body to church headquarters as long as visits are restricted to weekends and other conditions are met.

Ed Raspa, an architect and president of the Mt. Washington Assn., has tried to strike a middle course.

“I see it as a land-use matter,” he said. “It’s not a matter of personalities. The difference [in the dispute] has to do with who the developer is. It’s a neighbor. It seems to me that we should not treat our neighbors the same way we treat outsiders. That doesn’t mean you give them whatever they want.”