Expansion issue keeps bouncing

Alicia Robinson

Much like a pinball, the controversial St. Andrew’s Presbyterian

Church expansion proposal will bounce back to city officials next

week.

The Newport Beach City Council tonight will consider whether to

send the church’s expansion plan back to the Planning Commission.

St. Andrew’s officials want to enlarge their facilities by nearly

22,000 square feet, adding a new youth and family center, parking

and other amenities. Neighbors have complained the expansion will be

too big and will exacerbate existing problems with traffic and

parking.

The Planning Commission in December approved the church’s

controversial plan with a list of 23 conditions, one of which

required the church to forge a 30-year shared parking agreement with

adjacent Newport Harbor High School.

In response, the church offered a $3.5-million deal to the

Newport-Mesa Unified School District, but the school board last week

refused to consider it until the expansion question is settled.

The issue has been so divisive, it didn’t surprise church building

committee chairman Ken Williams that the school board didn’t want to

get embroiled in it.

“They just didn’t want to take any sides,” he said.

The church will ask the council to make the Planning Commission’s

parking requirement an either/or -- sign an agreement to share

parking with the school or provide more parking on-site as originally

planned.

The issue isn’t likely to be decided Tuesday. Sending it back to

the Planning Commission sounds reasonable to City Councilman Don

Webb, who serves the district that includes St. Andrew’s.

Even if the council approved the church expansion, there’s no

guarantee the school board would then agree to shared parking, Webb

said, adding, “I think the Planning Commission needs to look at that

and consider what the ramifications would be about not having parking

off-site.”

He’s disappointed that the church and neighbors haven’t been able

to work together to greater effect. But some neighbors still hold out

hope for a compromise.

Don Krotee, a spokesman for neighbors in Cliff Haven and Newport

Heights who oppose the church expansion, said he’d like the Planning

Commission to ask the church to redesign its project to be less

intrusive.

“That’s the community’s greatest hope, that we get a more

neighborly proposal through these processes,” he said.

But Williams pointed out the church already has reduced its

proposal from adding 35,948 square feet to 21,741 square feet. No

further reductions are on the table at this point, he said.

And the church may be taking a new tack toward what it sees as

below-the-belt hits by some in the community. People have distributed

fliers and exchanged rumors about what they think church is doing,

Williams said, citing one rumor that St. Andrew’s is planning to

start a private school.

“I think we will probably now get a lot more aggressive on the

misstatements and the exaggerated statements and the sometimes

outright lies about the project,” he said. “We’re just not going to

sit by and let these things unwind anymore.”

* ALICIA ROBINSON covers government and politics. She may be

reached at (714) 966-4626 or by e-mail at alicia.robinson

@latimes.com.