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Plans for a church facility expansion and housing project just outside Danville’s downtown neighborhood are poised to continue moving forward following hours of scrutiny and critique from the community and the Town Council at an appeal hearing this summer.
The council debated the appeal from a number of neighboring residents on July 21, in which they were seeking modifications to Community Presbyterian Church’s plans to expand its facilities at 222 West El Pintado and demolish 21 existing residential units to make way for a 49-unit townhouse project with 19 accessory dwelling units.
Councilmembers ultimately voted unanimously to uphold the Planning Commission’s previous decision to approve development plans and other applications for the project’s early stages. But the move came only after hours of discussion, and a number of strongly recommended changes for CPC to consider as it moves forward in the application and development process.
Like many housing projects in Danville, the discussion also served as an outlet for the Town Council to voice displeasure about recent state housing laws limiting local jurisdiction’s discretion in approving residential applications.
“We are incredibly frustrated by the limitations from the state of California – we’ve got to get new people in there,” Mayor Newell Arnerich said at the conclusion of last month’s hearing.
Those limitations were acknowledged by the appellants early on, who emphasized that they were not seeking to halt the project, but to make modifications to it that they felt would lessen impacts on the neighborhood.
“We understand the project’s exempt,” said Ian McNeill, who presented the appeal last month on behalf of a group of neighboring residents. “We’re just looking for some attachments to make the thing be implemented more smoothly.”
While the original appeal had included some significant asks from the applicant – such as funding the construction of a new Interstate 680 underpass near the end of Charles Lane – the appellants ultimately homed in on more modest proposals at the hearing.
Those included additional traffic analysis and restrictions, sidewalk and lighting improvements, and the implementation of an enforcement plan on neighboring streets before the start of construction.
In particular, McNeill said that he and his neighbors were seeking to highlight existing issues with the church’s operations that they felt were accounted for in the plan, including the traffic study’s conclusion that there was “very limited vehicle queuing” on West El Pintado.
“This is something that’s missed in a traffic study, but it’s something that rears in terms of an open house, in terms of a wedding in terms of these special events – being residents of Cedar Hollow, we get the spill over, and I’m sorry, but that can get intense,” McNeill said.
“We’d invite anybody next time there’s an event, come sit with one of us in the front yard,” he continued. “We’ll bring the coffee, maybe even a croissant, but you’ve got to see what goes on in so many situations in terms of people actually demanding that they have access to parking on our street.”
Overflow parking, pedestrian safety, repositioning the youth ministry building planned as part of the expansion, and accounting for the impacts of Sunday services and other activities were at the center of the formal appeal that night, although the dozens of other residents and CPC supporters who provided public comment offered a range of other perspectives.
“We looked at it not as a coincidence, but the timing as another one of those God winks,” CPC lead pastor Tyler Scott said during public comment. “And so at a time when our town has something that we were looking to do on our own, which is to take some of the homes that we own and turn them into townhomes.”
As Scott noted, the church has been eying the expansion and housing redevelopment since 2019, with its roots in Danville going back even further, having occupied its current site in 1950, nearly 100 years after it was founded.
“We didn’t know that state mandate was coming at all,” Scott continued. “I don’t believe that’s a coincidence. I believe it’s a part of a wink from God, and so it’s a way to continue to partner with the town. So I obviously vote that you would approve the project. I am not against trying to further partner with our neighbors. I love our neighbors, and I care for our neighbors.”
Eric Crane, who moved to the neighborhood four years ago, said that while he is generally supportive of increasing the town’s housing inventory, he did not feel that analysis for the project was reflective of the lived experience for residents in the neighborhood.
“Raise your hands if you’ve almost been hit by a car coming out of Valley Creek Lane in the last month – that’s not even mentioned here, let alone some of the other challenges we run into,” Crane said. “Carrying children in wagons, strollers, etc. – I’ve got a 5-year-old and a 2-year-old who are eager to get out and engage with the neighborhood.”
Patricia Medina was among the project’s critics who expressed skepticism about CPC’s characterization of it as an altruistic effort to provide for the town’s needs alongside the church’s own growth.
“The pastor did say that he is trying to do the right thing … (but) this isn’t really about helping the community, because they are displacing people from their homes, and they are adding so many residential units,” Medina said.
“This really looks like a rental investment, not targeting to help families, because they’re not stating anything that they’re going to do to lower the rents or to make it available for certain people of lower income, or help the community in any way other than make a profit,” she continued.
Lori Miller, a current resident of the neighborhood who had previously lived on a property now owned by CPC, said that failing to account for existing traffic risks that can stem from events and other programming at CPC could also pose a risk to the church itself.
“Nothing was studied during the youth ministry hours, which is in the evenings, and and just last night, 9 p.m. drop-off, pickup – when I see that building and it’s facing West El Pintado onto the plaza, those kids are going to be running in the dark, and they’re going to be running across the street,” Miller said.
“That’s why we keep talking about the orientation of the building, that it should really be facing toward the church so that the containment of the children and everything is within the confines of the space,” she continued. “I am really worried about that plaza facing West El Pintado and kids running around after.”
Reorienting the new youth ministry building proposed as part of the project was among the recommendations that the council ultimately made at the end of the hearing. They also sought to address concerns raised by Miller and others about the planned soccer field by making it closed to the public and unlit at night.
Those and other changes requested by the council are set to come to the town’s Design Review Board at a future hearing as the project continues making its way through the planning and application pipeline.
