Church Deal Moving Along

To create room for a long-awaited expansion, a Catholic parish in Newport Beach has agreed to spend $6.7 million for a neighboring Presbyterian church to move a few miles down the road.

If the rare interdenominational deal goes through, Our Lady Queen of Angels Catholic Church will pick up four acres of land adjacent to its property near Corona del Mar High School, land now occupied by St. Mark Presbyterian Church. There, it would build a new 1,200-seat church for its 4,800-family congregation. It also will give the parish the expansion room to double its full-up parochial school. The current church will be torn down for parking.

The 385-member Presbyterian church will gain 10 acres of prime land near Fashion Island, along with a new, custom-built sanctuary, meeting halls, offices and a preschool--with the Catholic Church picking up the tab.

Nearly half of the land, which abuts a small coastal canyon, will be left in its natural state.

The combined project is estimated to cost between $20 million and $25 million, Catholic church officials said. The money will be raised by the affluent Our Lady congregation.

The public will get its first peek at the churches’ proposals at tonight’s Newport Beach Planning Commission meeting. Commissioners will be asked to start the process toward granting an exception to the city’s General Plan in order to accommodate the land swap and new construction. The deal hinges on City Council approval of the projects, which is expected in four to six months.

“It was a wild idea,” said Father Vincent Gilmore, parochial vicar at Our Lady and architect of the land deal.

The growth of Our Lady, established in 1953, has mirrored the steady expansion of Newport Beach during the past half-century. Residents from recent Newport Coast developments have placed additional strain on church facilities. Six Sunday Masses are held to accommodate the worshipers in the 750-seat church. Parishioners must win a lottery to enroll their children in the kindergarten-through-eighth-grade parochial school.

Two years ago, Msgr. William P. McLaughlin, Our Lady’s pastor, deputized Gilmore to find ways the church could expand. So Gilmore walked across the street to see if Gary Collins, senior pastor at St. Mark, would consider moving.

“[Collins] said, ‘I like that kind of thinking.’ He understood our need,” Gilmore said.

Collins said his initial reaction to Our Lady’s overture was that it “could not fly. But I always like to say, ‘Let’s not draw an absolute conclusion.’

“Then I thought it over and got excited. We’d get better visibility and have the possibility of designing facilities to fit our ministry as we go into the new century.”

St. Mark and Our Lady have been neighbors and allies for almost 40 years, even sharing a number of ministries. In fact, that intimacy nearly prompted one longtime St. Mark member to vote against the deal.

“She didn’t want to move,” Collins explained. “She didn’t want the closeness between our churches to end.”

Beyond that, St. Mark church would be uprooted after decades in the same location. And its sanctuary would be demolished, a sacred and beloved building where hundreds of baptisms, weddings and funerals have taken place.

“There were many with reservations about leaving the familiar,” Collins said. “Things are going very well at this stage in St. Mark’s life. But then someone offers you a deal like this, and our mission can be enhanced. And that’s what it’s all about.”

The new St. Mark church would expand its sanctuary from 300 to 450 seats, create a significantly larger social hall, and make five acres of open space a prominent design feature. St. Mark would add roughly 7,000 square feet to its facilities.

The project faced formidable obstacles from the start. But Our Lady and St. Mark had an ally in councilman and former mayor Dennis D. O’Neil. A member at Our Lady and a land-use attorney, O’Neil volunteered to help the churches navigate the political waters of Newport Beach.

“I seriously believe I’ve been called to do this,” said O’Neil, a recent convert to Catholicism. “This may be what I’ve been put on Earth to do. I’m committed to see the project through.”

The challenges that have come up so far:

* Finding a suitable plot of open land in Newport Beach, which is nearly built out.

Catholic officials scoured the city and found two sites for St. Mark, the best one on the corner of MacArthur Boulevard and San Joaquin Hills Road that usually serves as a Christmas tree lot in December.

* Getting the Irvine Co. to sell the property, which wasn’t on the market.

* Convincing the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange to approve a deal that amounted to giving another denomination money to buy more land and build a church and preschool.

Diocese officials balked at first. But Our Lady Queen leaders proposed giving St. Mark $6.7 million for its current property, well over its market value, thereby not getting involved directly with the Presbyterian church’s purchase of its property and construction.

Our Lady officials also offered to give 10% of their capital campaign to a needy Catholic project in Orange County.

* Making sure the projects don’t trigger a citywide vote in the wake of a restrictive slow-growth initiative passed last fall. The Our Lady expansion would add 24,000 square feet to the city’s General Plan, but wouldn’t trip a citywide vote.

* Meeting with slow-growth advocates to show why one of the city’s last pieces of open space would work as a church site.

A St. Mark consultant met last month for two hours with members of Stop Polluting Our Newport, a powerful slow-growth group that has stopped many developments in the city’s history.

“I feel that the whole project is thought through very well,” said Claudia Owen, co-president of the group. “They’re trying to please everyone. And they’re doing a good job.”

Bob Caustin, founder of Defend the Bay, said he is undecided about the project. But he added that if the development gets approved, the Irvine Co. will receive a financial windfall from the zoning change and should designate another parcel of land within the city as open space. Irvine Co. spokesman Rich Elbaum said the company would not consider doing that.

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Double Move

Our Lady Queen of Angels plans to pay $6.7 million to St. Mark Presbyterian so the church can move and build new facilities. Our Lady Queen of Angels then would build a 1,200-seat church the St. Mark property.

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Source: St. Mark Presbyterian Church