Church that beat city law loses worship space
Ellen McCarty
FOUNTAIN VALLEY -- The City Council changed an ordinance last month
to permit Shalom Alliance Fellowship to hold worship services in
commercial zones where there is adequate parking, but church officials
say they must continue their search for a new home because their landlord
has raised their rent.
“It caught us by surprise after all that we went through,” Pastor Mariano
Yeo said. “If we had more money, we would pay the rent, but we owe
$10,000 on credit cards. Before, we prayed to God for a new ordinance.
Now we will pray for more money.”
The landlord, Andy Weigel of the Realty Trust Group, has charged the
group $360 a month for the last two years, but starting Sept. 1 will
increase the rent to about $1,600, Yeo said.
Weigel, who said he owns offices nationwide, said the hike is nothing
personal and that he knew nothing of the federal lawsuit the church filed
against the city until a few weeks ago.
“I would love to keep Mariano [Yeo] as a tenant,” he said, “but I’ve been
trying to lease this property for several years and now the market has
really picked up.”
The two men met a few years ago and Yeo asked Weigel to donate his vacant
property to the fellowship, Yeo said.
“I told him as long as I had empty space, he could use it,” Weigel said.
In a letter to Yeo notifying him to vacate the premises, Weigel said the
city denied a permit to expand a tenant’s office at the center “citing
inadequate parking due to your weekend services.”
“While I don’t have a problem with your services,” Weigel wrote in the
letter, “it is imperative I meet the expansion needs of the other
tenants, and I can’t do that without the city’s cooperation.”
Yeo said he suspects city officials put pressure on Weigel to evict him.
But Planning Director Andy Perea disputes the letter’s claim.
“We haven’t denied anything,” he said. “We haven’t even received an
application yet. The only discussion we had was with a retail tenant who
inquired about a possible expansion.”
As a standard procedure, the city requested the square footage of the
proposed building and the available parking spaces from the tenant, Perea
said, but no decision has been made.
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