More Of The St Mary Of The Angels Story Trickles Out

I had an e-mail exchange with a former vestryman at St Mary of the Angels Hollywood who is familiar with the third, and now the fourth, rounds of litigation, 2012 to date. It appears that more issues were connected to the Citibank tenancy in the commercial property 1984-2014 than people had originally understood. The vestryman says,

The alley and parking lot are now inextricably tied to the commercial property, 24/7/365! Totally landlocked for church services! One of the businesses is open year-round, daily, except Easter! No other Sunday parking! The City of LA demanded this property arrangement in order to give its OK for there to be any businesses at all in the commercial building. As it was, with 29 parking spots, not counting the alley, that was too few for the bureaucrats downtown, so they demanded bike parking at both ends of the building.

Even when the commercial building was first erected, there were parking "issues" with the City. I met the man who offered the solution at the time, making some special "concordat" or "Covenant" with the City, not to get overanxious about the parking lot not being large enough for the expected traffic of the bank's clientele. But as the bank was closed on ALL Sundays, there was never an issue for church parking then.

So there had always been a problem that the parking lot was never quite large enough to accommodate both traffic to the commercial building and the church. But this was in the background as long as the commercial tenant was a bank, which kept bankers' hours. But one of the tenants the Kelley group acquired when they regained the property in 2016 was a physical therapy practice, which was open 24/7/365, The city at this point required that all the parking spaces be available to the business at all times.

On one hand, this was more or less tolerable as long as not many people came to church. But it was clearly looming in the future. It's now coming out that a follow-on problem is that the parish's creditors are suing to acquire the commercial building, which had been security for loans taken out to pay attorneys and handle emergency maintenance on the facility. If the creditors are successful, the entire parking lot will be under their ownership, not the parish, and the parking issue will be even worse.

Fr Jordan, who was rector of St Mary of the Angels from 1956 to 1971 and curate before then, had undertaken a project of acquiring neighboring property for use as a parking lot. This resulted in 29 spaces by the 1970s. However, Fr Barker, who became rector in 1971, built the commercial building, which placed additional strain on parking, but with the parish preoccupied with litigation after 1977, that money went to lawyers and not to expanding the parking lot.

With the bank as a steady tenant for the next 30 years, nobody planned ahead. Thus another two rounds of litigation, one in the 1990s and one after 2012, absorbed millions that could otherwise have gone to acquiring more property to expand parking. What fascinates me is that when then-Bp Moyer made his episcopal visit in early 2011, he mentioned the need to expand parking in his homily. It wasn't lost on him == Moyer, for health reasons alone, would not have been the best choice for ordinary, but he clearly had an understanding of how to run a church his successors haven't.

From 2012 to 2016 alone, millions were spent by both parties on litigation that should instead have gone to expanding the parking lot and maintaining the facility. This is just one slowly emerging example of the misdirected effort, unrealistic expectations, and AWOL leadership that have plagued the Anglican project from the start.

Clearly Jeffrey Steenson was not the person to bring a parish facing such issues into the ordinariate. That can't have been his only shortcoming.