Treasurer explains
Legacy project

By Dale Trow
Facilities director

DEVELOPMENT PLAN—Bernie
Schnippert, church treasurer, explains
development project to area residents.

CHURCH OPTIONS—Bernie Schnippert speaks
to area residents Feb. 21. [Photos by Thomas C. Hanson]

PASADENA—Bernie Schnippert, church treasurer, conducted a community meeting in the Ambassador Auditorium Feb. 21 to explain the church’s perspective on the merits of the potential sale of the campus to Legacy Partners. Legacy Partners plans to build 1,727 housing units on the 49-acre property.

Throughout the lengthy escrow process, Legacy representatives, including Bill Shubin, vice president of acquisitions, have met with neighborhood associations, clubs, civic leaders, city staff and officials and individuals to answer questions and explain the benefits of the Legacy development.

Legacy also conducts community meetings and operates a visitors center in Ambassador Hall on campus.

"I’m excited to be here tonight because I get to tell you about the story of the church’s sale of its property," Dr. Schnippert said to the about 150 people in attendance. "And I think some people would have you believe that’s a big scary story, but it’s a great story and I'm proud to tell it."

In his two-hour presentation, Dr. Schnippert emphasized the church’s desire to be a good neighbor and to be sensitive to the community’s vision for development in the campus neighborhood, an area known as the West Gateway to the city.

The church did not enter into an agreement with a potential buyer until after the City completed an update to the community’s development vision in July 1998 in a document called the West Gateway Specific Plan, a component of the City’s General Plan.

The Plan preamble reads: "The Plan is the product of thirty-five meetings of the West Gateway Coordinating Committee, fifteen community workshops, and dozens of other meetings. This Plan represents an enormous investment of time, thought and energy of countless stakeholders into the future."

Legacy adhered to the plan while designing its development. The West Pasadena Residents Association (WPRA), now opposed to parts of the plan, wrote in Jan. 26, 2001: "The Legacy Project is generally consistent with the West Gateway Specific Plan. The WPRA supports the development of the West Campus as a purely residential development which retains and incorporates significant historical structures on the western part of the campus, concentrating new development on the East Campus."

Some community members and City officials are now evaluating the Legacy project by criteria other than that established in the plan.

Dr. Schnippert reminded the audience that the WCG and Legacy Partners "have relied upon the General Plan, your General Plan. It’s a vision for the community—the formal vision for the community."

Under the plan, the property is already zoned for 2,500 housing units. Legacy partners has reduced its original plan for 1,900 units to 1,727 (including 100 affordable units). The Legacy plan preserves the historic gardens, retains about 11 acres of green space on the West Campus, mitigates traffic and brings the performing arts back to Ambassador Auditorium. About 48 percent of the west campus will be preserved under the Legacy Plan.

The Pasadena Unified School District, under the current plan, will receive about $4 million in fees and $30 million in property taxes over 25 years. The City will benefit fiscally also with an estimated increase of $33 million in net revenues over 25 years to the city’s general fund.

Dr. Schnippert informed the audience that project participants, including the church, have spent millions of dollars during escrow as they worked in good faith toward the development goals outlined by the community, and that time and money are running out.

"Whenever you decide how you feel about the Legacy Project, I would just ask that based upon the facts that I explain here to you tonight, that you would realize that a vote against the Legacy Project is a vote for the other options."

To illustrate the urgency of the community’s consideration of the project, Dr. Schnippert outlined the cost of maintaining the campus and the downturn in income that started in 1995 because of doctrinal changes. Explaining that the church can’t afford to indefinitely maintain the property, Dr. Schnippert held up a copy of a permit request for the church to install a chain link security fence around the property. "You know, we’re going to have to put a fence around the property if it doesn’t sell real soon."

Some project opponents have suggested alternate projects, for example, that the campus might become a park, without regard for the market forces or financial responsibility of the officers of the church to be fiscally prudent.

Dr. Schnippert referred to the California Corporations Code for nonprofit religious corporations to explain what is commonly called "duty of care" and clarified his responsibility to attain the best possible deal for the church members.

Dr. Schnippert went on to explain that the church had received nearly 100 formal, written offers on all or part of the property and countless additional inquiries from a variety of interested parties. He tipped four full file boxes forward so the audience could see the paperwork generated by the interest.

"Some people have indicated that the church doesn’t have any other options and that’s why it went with Legacy and it has to stay with Legacy," said Dr. Schnippert. He went on to explain that opponents who suggest no more than 1,200 units in the development must understand that, at some point, the deal is no longer financially viable for Legacy or the church.

One option, Dr. Schnippert announced, is to sell the campus to a small college. Many in the neighborhood have suggested that they would support such a use. Dr. Schnippert pointed out that a new college on the property wouldn’t create another Ambassador College with 1,200 students. It would more closely resemble Pasadena City College, which has a campus of about 50 acres and 30,000 students. Unlike the Legacy project, such a user would not have to mitigate the traffic created by the new college.

Continuing, Dr. Schnippert asked: "What about religious users? We have had many religious parties interested in this campus."

Dr. Schnippert explained that churches would also not have to mitigate traffic, and that they have certain protections that the community may not know about. He quoted a decision from the California Supreme Court that authorized churches to declare themselves exempt from historic preservation laws if they would suffer a substantial hardship if the property were designated a historic monument.

To further make his point, Dr. Schnippert informed the audience about a law called the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA). "A new federal law provides important new protections for religious freedoms in the contexts of zoning laws," read Dr. Schnippert. "The federal government has passed a law that forbids cities from zoning churches out of existence."

Dr. Schnippert then announced a third option for the property, should the community reject the Legacy project. "Are you aware of the fact that this property is already made up of 138 separate lots? There are 138 different purchases here, and we don’t need to go to the City and beg them to let us carve it up. It’s already carved up!" he said.

To drive home his point of the patchwork of developments that could occupy the property, Dr. Schnippert read examples of the uses already allowed by zoning laws. The uses included everything from government offices to commercial printing plants, to laboratories and take-out restaurants.

Dr. Schnippert commented that the surrounding neighborhood is zoned for, and already developed at a density of 14 units per acre along South Orange Grove Boulevard. Legacy proposes 12.3 units an acre adjacent to South Orange Grove. Zoning allows a density of 48 units an acre on other parts of the West Campus and the project calls for only 37.6 units an acre.

Legacy has achieved these numbers despite protecting several acres of green space, gardens and walkways in support of the community’s wishes dictated by the West Gateway Specific Plan.

Though density is substantially below that allowed, some opponents have suggested a lower, deal-breaking level of density. Dr. Schnippert asked: "Who determines density? Is it you? Is it the Specific Plan?" Dr. Schnippert continued, "The answer—the market has controlled the density."

Traffic is another issue that opponents cite in support of an alternative plan. Legacy employed leading traffic consultants, Crane & Associates, to study the traffic impact of the development. Among their findings is that the project will generate about 8,870 trips a day, or about the same amount of traffic as a fully operational Ambassador College.

Studies also show that, without the development, traffic from ambient local growth and regional cut-through traffic will be worse in the future than without the traffic mitigation the Legacy project funds. With mitigation, only 745 daily trips on South Orange Grove Boulevard south of Del Mar Boulevard can be attributed to the campus development.

"If the church does nothing, the ambient traffic, we are told by the experts, will in five or 10 years be greater because there are no mitigations," explained Dr. Schnippert. Legacy estimates that it will provide, depending on the development agreement, as much as $7 million toward traffic improvements in conjunction with the city’s mobility plan.

Working with traffic experts and City staff, the funds would be used for such things as street widening and automated traffic controls. Dr. Schnippert reminded the audience that alternate options would not be required to fund traffic improvements.

"Now what about a new religious user who would begin to populate the campus, especially one that might have a school?" asked Dr. Schnippert. "Will they stop the traffic? As far as I know, they won’t have to mitigate the traffic. They’ll bring traffic; they won’t mitigate the traffic."

A key to the Legacy plan is the conveyance of Ambassador Auditorium to the City through funding provided by a special tax district called a Community Facilities District. Under the plan, future property owners would repay tax-exempt bonds to fund the purchase and upgrade of the Auditorium. The Auditorium needs some infrastructure improvements to meet Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) requirements and to update other building systems.

Legacy has established the Ambassador for the Performing Arts Foundation, a nonprofit entity, to manage and operate the facility with private funds. Some city council members have questioned the value being assigned to the Auditorium and are concerned about future maintenance liabilities.

Legacy has structured several layers of financial guarantees to insulate the City from any future expenditure of taxpayer money to maintain the building.

Dr. Schnippert told the audience that it was discouraging to be told by members of the city council that the Auditorium has virtually no value. "Now I was perplexed by that because I have the City’s own appraisal for $22 million," said Dr. Schnippert, holding up the appraisal for all to see.

Dr. Schnippert concluded with a passionate plea for community support. "Imagine the General Plan actually is a coherent plan for the city and that it is a vision for tomorrow. Imagine that the Specific Plan was put together after hundreds of meetings and signed by some of the people in this room. Imagine it’s not just a list of things not to do, but a vision of the city that saves this Auditorium, that saves the gardens, that saves the historic properties, that saves the ambiance, so you who walk through here still feel the way you do when you walk through now."

Dr. Schnippert confided to the audience that he doesn’t expect perfect harmony in such a complex project, "but if we work together, we just might do something wonderful in Pasadena."

Copyright © Worldwide Church of God, 2002