Condo owners say churches disrupt neighborhood

Regarding the story “St. Mark picks new home,” Daily Pilot, Jan. 9:

We have owned and resided in our condominium located in the

immediate neighborhood of both St. Mark Presbyterian Church and Our

Lady Queen of Angel’s for the past 25 years. And as such, we take

great umbrage to the city’s Environmental Quality Affairs Committees

conducting an environmental study on St. Mark’s proposed site when,

in fact, the committee has demonstrated little if any concern on the

effect that these two churches and the high school have had on our

neighborhood.

Equally disturbing to us is while the Environmental Quality

Affairs Committee has drafted a “laundry list of concerns for the

environmental study to examine” at St. Mark’s proposed site, the

committee has exhibited total disregard for the laundry list of

problems that have and continue to wreak havoc in and around their

present location.

These are issues that have and remain unaddressed for far too long

by the committee, Planning Commission and the city itself and have,

in fact, compromised the day-to-day quality of life and environment

in our neighborhood. In failing to address the impact St. Mark’s and

its neighboring church and high school have had on the hundreds of

condominiums and apartments in our neighborhood, the committee

expresses a far greater concern for the effect that St. Mark will

have on a golf course and apartment building. This in and of itself

speaks volumes of the committee’s distorted sense of priorities. In

all candor, we don’t know what offends us more, the committee’s

arrogance or indolence.

Wouldn’t the city in general be far better served if the

Environmental Quality Affairs Committee would focus its considerable

energies on addressing the problems that already exist here before

spending thousands of taxpayer dollars on this environmental study?

We have come to believe that many of these so called environmental

studies serve little purpose, other than to portray the concern of

elected officials and their respective committees and are, at the end

of the day, nothing more than an exercise in futility.

We are not going to waste our time arguing semantics.

Given the city’s histrionics and the lack of any real backbone

when it comes to developments such as this (who can say no to a

church?) it appears that St. Mark’s groundbreaking is a foregone

conclusion and this so called environmental study is only a minor

informality, thereby clearing the way for Our Lady Queen of Angels to

break ground on an overly ambitious proposal that calls for doubling

the size of both its cathedral and school.

Furthermore, despite Scott Barnard’s statement that “expansion

plans for Our Lady Queen of Angels are not yet complete,” all

evidence is to the contrary. Two years ago, when we contacted Our

Lady Queen of Angels seeking information about the scope of its

proposal, officials there directed us to a public relations

representative who was evasive in responding to our queries. Our

suspicions were confirmed by the Planning Department, which verified

that the church had, in fact, already submitted its proposed

expansion plans for review. The clandestine manner in which Our Lady

Queen of Angels operates is neither appreciated nor has gone

unnoticed. It is important to note that its proposed expansion plan

neither addresses the egregious traffic problem that currently exists

or the projected increase of traffic that will come with doubling the

size of both its cathedral and school.

Simply put, Our Lady Queen of Angels has outgrown this

neighborhood.

Adding insult to injury, it appears that neither St. Mark’s or Our

Lady Queen of Angels’ proposed expansion projects will “trigger a

Greenlight vote.” If this proposal were a Koll Development, or any

other developer for that matter, you can bet that Greenlight would be

all over it like a cheap suit.

All our attempts to enlist the help of Greenlight have fallen on

deaf ears. Greenlight’s failure to get involved with this cause is de

facto discrimination and is monumentally illustrative of the double

standard that exists within that organization.

What is troubling to us is that the Environmental Quality Affairs

Committee has given little consideration to the consequences their

actions will, in fact, have on our neighborhood. The streets are not

now, or ever were, designed to handle the traffic and or congestion

that these three institutions bring on a daily basis. The city only

exacerbated an already out-of-control problem when it closed Bison to

through traffic thereby adding unnecessary stress to both

intersections at Eastbluff Drive and Jamboree Road, and effectively

turned what used to be public streets into semi-private roads.

All at the expense of those of us who reside across the street,

adding to the endless list of streets that have become inaccessible

for use by those who contributed to the cost of building and

maintaining them. As it is, access to our own residential streets is

now restricted on school days, thereby limiting our ingress and

egress to our own homes. Remember that these are streets that our tax

dollars contribute to build and maintain. St. Mark’s and Our Lady

Queen of Angels contribute nothing due to their tax-exempt status.

Never mind the fact that high school students, their parents, friends

as well as those attending services at both St. Mark and Our Lady

Queen of Angels regularly exhibit a blatant disrespect for traffic

laws thereby jeopardizing those of us who live here. On any given

day, many disregard stop signs, speed limits, block intersections,

double park and trespass on private property. The sobering reality is

that our very quality of life is disintegrating day by day while the

city’s Environmental Quality Affairs Committee, city planners and

City Council sit idly by doing nothing to protect the interests of

those of us who call this neighborhood, or what’s left of it, our

home.

That said, we want to know what actions, if any, that the city’s

Environmental Quality Affairs Committee intends to take to address

the egregious oversight of these already existing problems, problems

that the committee has turned its collective backs to and the

dramatic effect it has had on our neighborhood. You don’t have to be

a rocket scientist or conduct another useless environmental study to

see that’s there is something wrong with this picture. All you have

to do is open your eyes. Enough said.

WILLIAM AND BETTE DOREMUS

Newport Beach