Queen of Angels MUP
approved
after decades of work
By Lori
Bledsoe
The Alpine Sun
ALPINE — On Friday, Sept. 21, the plans from the parish of
Queen of Angels Catholic Church were under the scrutiny of the
County of San Diego for what might have been the last time. The
parish was presenting their plea to the county board for a MUP,
multiple use permit, to enable them to move on with their plans
to build their long awaited new church.
This building saga has been dragging on for decades.
The plans to build a new church to house a growing population in
Alpine began more than 20 years ago. The parish, at that time
numbered a little over 200 families, which caused the existing
church to be filled to capacity during weekend services.
The small white church with the blue roof on West
Victoria Drive was built in the very early 1950s by
parishioners, some of whom are still in attendance at weekly
masses. This little building has been serving to house a growing
population at Sunday services, weddings, baptisms and funerals.
Now the parish has grown to over 700 families, and the building
of the new church has not yet occurred, despite fund raisers,
plans, new plans, fervor from the parishioners, and not to
mention the hopes and dreams of the past five pastors who have
been in residence in the parish.
This building project has been silently made to jump
through hoops repeatedly, and with each success, the project is
faced with opposition from neighboring homeowners, who would
rather not see this particular progress take place.
However, as the parish faced this meeting, knowing that
in light of the recent turmoil in the diocese, the funds that
they had saved, and fund raised, donated and scraped up, were
dwindling. They knew that their voices had yet to be heard by
the county.
Granted, the opposition has spoken up, speaking their
mind that as they opposed the idea of a possible lighted parking
lot blotting out the dark country skies, and the bells ringing
that would wake them up on Sunday morning, and a steeple that
may block their view of the valley that leads up the Interstate
8. Other complaints included that the dangerous traffic on
Victoria would only increase, and the new church would devalue
surrounding properties.
As the meeting drew near, the parish was feeling the
doom of the impending closure of a long lived and anticipated
dream. The parish was not only asked to pray, but was asked to
show their support for this project.
At 6:30 a.m. on Friday, Sept. 21, the morning
mass-goers began arriving at the church, and at 7:15 a.m., a big
white bus rolled into the parking lot of Queen of Angels, to
hopefully transport people from the parish to county building on
Ruffin Road let their voices be heard about this project for the
first time.
At 9 a.m. more than 80 people from the Queen of Angels
parish in Alpine either rode by bus or drove to this meeting to
attend this very important meeting. Many of these people donned
blue t-shirts imprinted with the parish name to show solidarity,
and over 60 speaker cards were filled out by the parishioners
and turned in to the county board to positively impart the
ideas, positions and thoughts of Alpine community members who
are in favor of this church building project.
After hours of presentations and speakers addressing
the board, the board deliberated a few building glitches that
they needed clarification on. They questioned the concerns of
the surrounding homeowners, and clarified the lighting
procedures that would be taking place.
The proposed parking lot will have minimal night
lighting for safety purposes and will have time limits on when
full lighting can occur. The times of operation were also
clarified. The church was asking for operating times to be until
11 p.m. but acquiesced to closing times at 9 p.m. throughout the
week, 10 p.m. on weekends allowing time for visitors to egress
the sight, with exceptions for special holidays such as
Christmas and Easter.
The building project was also upgraded to include
permeable asphalt or cement for the parking lot area to secure
that ground water run-off does not exceed existing amounts.
At the end of all this, all questions were answered,
declarations were made, and concerns were addressed, Queen of
Angels faced the final challenge of the day.
Only four council members were present creating the
tension of needing four out of four votes for this project to
proceed. If only one member declined to permit the coveted MUP,
Queen of Angels would have faced the final blow to their
building dream.
Nevertheless, in the end, it passed with the four out
of four members giving a green light and Queen of Angels was
granted the MUP allowing them to proceed with the construction
of the new church building.
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