Council OKs gym plan

Despite protests from neighbors, Huntington Beach City Council members this week approved plans for a 2,700-square-foot gymnasium at Brethren Christian School.

The school’s request drew protests from about 50 neighbors at Monday’s council meeting. The neighbors are concerned the gym will spur more traffic and noise.

About 400 neighbors signed a petition protesting the gym, according to neighbor Alicia Waterhouse.

“We can only suppose all the activity that would take place,” Waterhouse told council members. “There are over 55 events currently held in the field. After the gym comes, outside events will further add traffic. Think of nighttime football games with full marching bands and 600 screaming fans. How do you put a 4-year-old to sleep? We shouldn’t have to endure this in our own homes.”

Neighbors also worry the gym’s visitors will swallow up parking in the area and could lead to more traffic accidents as it draws more teenage drivers to the neighborhood.

“This puts more pressure on public service,” said resident Kathrene Kin. “There will be more after-hours activities, more graffiti on the walls. They will be letting in thousands of people in the neighborhood that it does not have the capacity to support.”

Kevin Coleman, who applied for the gym’s construction permit and father of two students attending Brethren, defended the proposal.

“We have no desire to rent this gym out,” Coleman said in response to the council’s concerns that the construction of the gym might be paid for by renting out for outside events. “We plan to fundraise and pay for the gym ourselves.”

“Our gym and football field are not part of a plan to massively increase our enrollment,” Brethren Principal Rick Niswonger said. “They simply are designed to serve the existing needs of our students.”

Kim Healy, who has two students attending Brethren and lives in the neighborhood, was surprised by the reaction to the gym proposal.

“I have been to every sporting event at the school,” Healy said. “They are not negligent in their activities. They are very responsible at each of their events.”

Council members maintained throughout the meeting that they wanted the school to have a gymnasium, but with restrictions.

“I think one of the major things at question here is the use of the gymnasium,” Councilman Don Hansen said. “What seems to be the problem is this perception that this is going to be the 7-Eleven of gyms. I don’t think that’d be the case, but that could be a fear among the neighbors.”

To solve this problem, Hansen suggested placing a limit on the number of outside events to be held at the gym annually.

Some council members also initially took issue with the gym’s size. Council members Jill Hardy and Joe Carchio, who voted against the proposal, felt the gym was too big for a student population of 400. Edison High School has more students but a smaller gym, Carchio said.

“I know the importance of a gym,” Carchio said. “But I don’t think folks living in a community expect a big box to be dumped right in the middle of their neighborhood.”

Council members put the following conditions on the gym:

 a cap of 24 annual events

 football games restricted to Fridays and Saturdays with a cap of 7 a year.

 No simultaneous football and basketball games.

 The gym will be reviewed in six months to a year.

“They had 400 residents asking them for something and they said no,” said resident Larry Waterhouse. “An outside user is looked at more favorably than people who the council has been elected to represent.”