Church's Plan to Buy CHIME Campus Worries Neighbors

CHIME Charter Middle School is trying, for at least the third time, to negotiate the sale of its Chatsworth campus, a process slowed by neighbors' vocal concerns over traffic and noise that might be generated by a new owner.

Trinity Lutheran Church of Reseda is now interested in the facility, originally marketed at $2.4 million.

Trinity has been at its Reseda location for more than 50 years.  The congregation once had 500 members but has now declined to about 75, with 30-to-40 worshipping each week.  "We hope to grow but we don't expect to get back to 500," said the church's Ron Johnson. 

CHIME moved to the 2.25-acre rustic grounds at 22280 Devonshire St., once the site of a chicken ranch, in  2005.  The school's play yard is still neatly mowed and the old one-story wooden buildings are painted a sedate cowboy brown.  The campus is surrounded on two sides by expensive one-story homes.  Across Valley Circle Boulevard is the broad expanse of lawn leading to the Rockpointe condominium clubhouse. Continuing north are horse ranches and dirt roads. Across Devonshire Street are one-story Rockpointe villas.  Farther west on Devonshire Street is the entrance to Chatsworth Park South.

Many local residents have said they found CHIME to be a good neighbor, particularly because the facility went unused at night and most weekends, leaving the area clear of traffic and free of noise.

During the past year Saints Peter and Paul Maronite Catholic Church, currently located in Winnetka, sought to buy the property and had plans to erect several multistory buildings, including a large sanctuary. The church withdrew after residents complained to the  Chatsworth Neighborhood Council's Land Use Committee that the church's buildings would tower over the surrounding one-story homes and that there would be insufficient parking for major church holidays and events such as weddings and fundraising festivals.

North Hills Preparatory School also expressed interest in a 10-year lease of the property. However, neighbors objected to the potential for increased traffic and noise from the school. And when CHIME's decades-old conditional use permit recently came up for renewal, it no longer allowed a high school on the site, which led to  North Hills Prep pulling out.

CHIME then moved the middle school to its elementary school campus in Woodland Hills, leaving only its pre-school on the land.

Trinity Lutheran then expressed interest in the property.

Jeff Weber of Church Development Partners, a nonprofit real estate development arm of the Lutheran Church's Missouri Synod, represented Trinity before the Sept. 16 meeting of the land use committee. (The committee makes recommendations on zoning and development to the city before any project can be approved.)

Weber said Trinity has already sold its Reseda property and wants to move to the CHIME land by December or January.  He said the church wants to have the property's existing conditional use permit modified to allow church use.  However, the normal process would require applying for an entirely new permit and holding public hearings, a process that could take months.

"We have every intention of refiling the CUP," he said.

There are no plans for major construction at the CHIME site, Weber said.  The church plans only to clean up the grounds and make repairs to the rustic buildings and modular classrooms.  He said the main building has structural and electrical wiring problems,  and infestations of termites and ground squirrels.

The current classrooms are clustered behind the main office.  They look like bunkhouses from the Old West with exposed interior beams and rows of horizontal windows.

"What we're looking to do is clean up the entire property, not tear the buildings down," Weber told the land use committee.  "We're looking to come in and really clean things up. We would go back to a motif that is consistent with the neighborhood."

The CHIME pre-school would continue to operate on part of the site.

Weber said Trinity has no plans to operate a day school on the property, but there might be after-school classes in music, dance and cooking.  The pool on the property could be used by the Red Cross for swimming lessons, he said, and the campus could also be opened to nonprofits.  Trinity operates a high school on Kittridge Street in Canoga Park.

Weber said the church might want to establish a school on the site "five years out,"  but there are no such plans now.  "We may or may not have a school there in the foreseeable future," he said.

"Before we go ahead and execute the sale we wanted to talk to you guys . . . so we can move in and be a good neighbor," Weber told the committee. But committee members still challenged Trinity's proposal on matters of potential noise and lack of parking.

"I don't think you know what we think a good neighbor is," said local resident Bill Neighbors.

Teena Takata, the land use committee's secretary, said city regulations require a church to have one parking space for every three pew seats. "If we do expand the parking," Weber responded, "it's still on-site. We don't need the street parking. We have enough on-site parking to accommodate what we do on a weekly basis."

But committee members and residents weren't convinced. "Who gets [Trinity] to comply?" asked neighborhood resident Karl Kesler.  That would fall to Los Angeles' cash-strapped Department of Building and Safety.

"We're very leery," committee member Vicki Briskman told Weber. "If you stay as small as you are, I don't think that would create a problem. But the thought of large church events. . . .  I think that's the fear you're seeing," she said. 

Weber said Trinity holds board meetings once a month and daytime activities such as sewing circles. While it holds car washes and bake sales two or three times a year, it has no major fundraisers, he said.

"This facility really fits our needs," Weber said. "It's the right size, it's quiet. We want to be able to conduct our church services in this part of the valley."

If the church decides to go ahead with the purchase and seek a new conditional use permit, it would have to return for another hearing before the land use committee.

The committee meets every third Thursday of the month at 7 p.m. at the Chatsworth train depot, 10038 Old Depot Plaza Rd.

Tina Schrader contributed to this article.