College Church’s hope for a new parking lot to the west of the sanctuary building on Seminary Avenue has faced concerns from some neighbors in Wheaton.
Daily Herald file photo
College Church in Wheaton is going back to the drawing board after an initial plan for a new parking lot to the west of the main sanctuary drew concerns from some neighbors.
The proposed project called for tearing down a single-family home and five multifamily structures to make way for a parking Iot with 116 spaces at Scott Street and Seminary Avenue.
The church removed its petition from the agenda for the city’s planning and zoning board “for now,” according to an update in the latest edition of Connections, the congregation’s monthly magazine.
“We received late word from the City that there is more we need to do to convince them that we should be able to change the zoning, receive variances and build as large a parking lot as we had planned. We will keep the congregation informed as we move forward,” read the magazine update.
According to a church leader, a major reason for the desire for a parking lot on the same side of the street as the sanctuary is because it serves a large special needs population.
“We have 140 families who are registered in our disability ministry and yet so very few parking spaces, and nearly every week we have visitors who are attracted to the church because of the well known disability ministry,” she wrote a city planner. “There are also a number of congregants who have severe mobility issues.”
Wheaton’s College Church proposed tearing down six residential structures along Seminary Avenue to clear the way for a parking Iot.
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The church has 281 existing parking spaces, including 18 ADA spaces, spread across four lots, per a city memo. The church also has shared parking agreements with Wheaton College to use roughly 100 spaces during the school year at the Billy Graham Center, Blanchard Hall and Edman Chapel.
However, approving the proposal “would permanently remove seven residentially zoned properties in a part of Wheaton where housing is already in short supply and the cost of supply has risen significantly,” a Scott Street resident wrote the same city planner in August.
“Every home that is lost means fewer opportunities for families and residents to live close to the downtown core. In its place would be a surface parking lot — one of the least productive and least community-oriented uses of land.”
The city’s comprehensive plan recommends that any future church growth in the Union Avenue neighborhood “happen in a planned manner with minimal impact on the residential neighbors,” according to a staff report. To that end, the city adopted measures to require generous setbacks for future parking lots that would provide sufficient landscape screening.
As the proposed plan sought to reduce that setback by 85% to the north and 70% to the south and west, staff recommended against the approval of the zoning request as submitted.
They also recommended that consideration of the rezoning and special use permit request not be undertaken until a revised plan, prepared “in full compliance with the setback requirements,” is submitted for review.
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