Parking lot must be fenced

It was kids’ soccer versus a church at a Tuesday planning commission meeting, as an AYSO representative told commissioners he worried that parking lot traffic at an expanding parochial school would jeopardize kids. Ultimately the commission showed similar concern by requiring a wall at the spot they considered most dangerous.

The commission approved a final version of a new conditional use permit for Grace Lutheran School, which plans to add trailers and a preschool to its new campus at a former public school on the south side of McFadden Road, just east of Bolsa Chica Street.

According to the application, Grace Lutheran School will have up to 229 kindergarten through eighth-grade students, preschool facilities for up to 100, day care for up to 150 children and a religious assembly with Sunday morning services for up to 168 people.

The field, which was once part of the campus of the long-closed Robinwood School, is shared between soccer programs and Grace Lutheran, and AYSO Region 143 commissioner Phillip Hice said it has been a productive partnership.

But with more kids staying after school and more cars going through the parking lot, he said it could be a problem and he didn’t want to see an accident.

“It doesn’t seem like things are going in the right direction,” he said.

“If we’re going to be doubling or tripling the people that are there we want to know and take care of it.”

Church and school representative Phil Burtis said it was too expensive to build a wall along half the parking lot, and that the school didn’t use the lot when soccer practice did.

“It’s $8,000 to $10,000, which is 20% of what’s required to bring the preschool onto the site,” he said.

“That driveway is closed during school hours. The same dollars would be better used on preschool fencing or safe playing ground where we really need it.”

Hice offered to pay half the cost, but Burtis said it was still “barely my problem” and said he preferred to minimize traffic there.

City staff noted that the commission couldn’t require a particular party to pay for the wall — just that someone build it. Nor could the city require speed bumps to slow traffic in the driveway.

Commission Chairman John Scandura said that not being able to broker a deal didn’t mean the wall wasn’t necessary. “We have to look at safety,” he said. “All we need to do is have an accident out there, and quite honestly, nobody’s going to care who should have been paying for that fence. The public will be saying, ‘Why wasn’t that fence there?’”

The council approved the permit with the new requirement 6-0, with commissioner Fred Speaker abstaining. The church has 10 days to appeal the decision, but it was not known Wednesday what church officials would do next.