Los Gatos Weekly-Times

Calvary expansion survives appeal to Council

By John Pancharian

Last-ditch efforts by Robie Lane neighbors failed to scuttle planned construction at Calvary Church on Los Gatos Boulevard. The Los Gatos Town Council, at its July 6 meeting, upheld the Planning Commission's decision to approve Calvary's architecture and site application.

Calvary first came to the town with the extension plans in 1994, when the church applied for a conditional-use permit and began the environmental review process. In 1997, the church asked for a time extension and applied for architecture and site approval, which the Planning Commission granted WHEN?.

Neighboring residents, led by James Lowe, had appealed the decision to the council. Calvary plans to demolish an existing building and replace it with a 52,000-square-foot multipurpose building and gymnasium. The church also plans to create a second parking lot at the end of Robie Lane to handle overflow, which will require demolishing a house it owns there. Seating in the church requires 420 parking spaces. Calvary currently has 437 spaces and the overflow lot would bring the total to 467.

Though neighbors had specifically appealed the Planning Commission's approval of Calvary's architecture and site application, neighbors seemed determined to turn the public hearing into a discussion of the validity of the conditional-use permit. "Simultaneous use of the gym and the auditorium must be considered by the council," Lowe said. He argued that such use would create a need for more than 600 parking places and said that the CUP must be amended to prevent simultaneous use.

Mayor Linda Lubeck said she doubted the church would hold simultaneous events in the auditorium and the gym, thus annoying their own congregation by exceeding the parking capacity. "One would assume that they wouldn't be that stupid," she said.

Neighbors in the area were uniformly opposed to the Calvary expansion, but few of their comments concerned matters of architecture and site. Robie Lane resident Vera Pierce said she thought the construction of the new facility constituted intensification of use and argued the CUP must therefore be reviewed.

Lubeck reminded those in the audience that the council could not legally hold the public hearing on the topic of the CUP, as it had not been announced as such, but her remarks did not change the direction of neighbors' comments.

"We came back on this because we are not satisfied," Pierce said.

"Clearly, there must be something wrong with it or it wouldn't be dragging on," resident Dorothy Rowe said. She spoke emotionally about anticipated traffic problems. "I just feel the traffic study was really flawed," she said.

"If you don't think about it now, when will you?" asked resident Gail Brady, urging the council to reopen the matter of the CUP.

Town Attorney Orry Korb responded that once a CUP has been granted, it constitutes rights similar to property rights and that the council would need to move carefully if it did choose to reopen the issue. Korb said to revoke the CUP, the town would have to find that Calvary had applied for it fraudulently, had violated the conditions of use, or that the use for which the CUP had been granted is somehow dangerous or a nuisance to the community.

"If the Planning Commission is happy with it, I'm happy with it," Lubeck said just before the council denied the appeal. Only Councilmember Jan Hutchins voted to grant the appeal, on the grounds he did not think the building meshed with the surrounding community. "Since I'm not a designer, all I know is what I like and what I don't like," he said. "I won't be supporting the motion."

"We don't feel necessarily like the winners in a battle," Steve Torres, Calvary project director, said. "We feel like the process of town government did its job. They took a variety of needs and desires and tried to look at all sides."

Torres said he was eager for the church to move beyond the current controversy. "We intend to be proactive with the neighbors and make the relationship as comfortable as we can for them and for us."

[ Back to Contents Page | Los Gatos Weekly-Times Home Page | Archives ]