Several years ago The Master’s College, in an endeavor to provide more space for their growing college student population, decided to build a Chapel / Auditorium / Performing Arts Theater on a piece of land at their North Campus location. They had inherited a plan for a small chapel / auditorium along with the purchase of the North Campus property and decided that it would help in their ability to effectively provide a place for the students to have their devotional services and a venue for the other musical and school functions.

     As the auditorium design grew in size and complexity and the school departments all had their input, the original architects of the project failed to realize the severe impacts that their design would have to the canyon floor of our adjoining Placerita Canyon neighborhood. The college also was given direction to come up with a Master Plan of their anticipated needs for development, for the next 25 years.

     After the Placerita Canyon Property Owners Association communicated their concerns over the size and location of the proposed project, the college retained a group of consultants to work with the PCPOA and develop the Master Planning Document. This group, lead by Dave Armstrong, has operated in an exemplary manner throughout the long and arduous task of combining the college’s needs with the constraints of an existing residential rural equestrian neighborhood.

     The PCPOA Board of Directors as a group has been included in the discussions and has been listened to, as the Master Plan took shape. All of our concerns, as to the impacts to the local canyon community have been addressed. Architectural and engineering design details have been shown to the PCPOA Board of Directors as they were developed. Equestrian related design elements have been included within the scope of the plan. All Student Campus and Special Events Traffic has been removed from the Placerita Canyon residential streets and been redirected to the new campus entry off of Dockweiler.

     The Master’s College Master Plan is now going before the Planning Commission for review of the Environmental Impact Report. (E.I.R.) This report is required to list various alternative designs as a part of the requirements. Some of the alterative designs may appear on the surface to be contradictory to the information the PCPOA Board of Directors has reported to you in the past but it is required to presented in the EIR, in order to address the concerns of other impacted organizations.

The alternatives that are to be listed in the EIR are as follows:

Alt #1 – The Master’s Proposed Project

Alt #2 - “Ridgeline Alternative” - to preserve the ridgeline, no grading but put all of the planned buildings in the canyon (remember the chapel on the north campus? No Dockweiler extension)

Alt #3 - “Reduced Development/Oak Tree Alternative” Move the chapel 75’ eastward to save some of the oaks, remove Deputy Jake extension (this could easily be adopted to calm the Hidden Knoll folks but removes the college’s ability to pay for all of the Dockweiler costs).

Alt #4 – Single Family Alternative – Change the 54 multi-family units to 30 single-family units.

Alt #5 – Existing Zoning/General Plan Land Use Alternative – this is the no project leave everything as it is option.

     There may be additional modifications as the city edits. The city is not advocating these alternatives, just trying to anticipate questions from the public and Planning Commission / City Council members.

     The PCPOA Board of Directors as a group has been consistently informed with regards to this process and has voted as a Board, to support our canyon neighbor in their Master Plan, as we currently understand it.