No decision on Calvary expansion

Calvary Chapel must wait another month before it learns whether the Chadd Ford Planning Commission will recommend approval for the chapel’s planned expansion.

For background, Calvary Chapel received approval for the church at 500 Brandywine Drive in 2008 and was opened in 2009 after getting land use and conditional use approval. The bureaucratic process took five years because of continuances.

The church was before the commission in September with a plan for an 11,500 square foot auditorium and outdoor terrace, but commission members wanted more information. At that time, Calvary’s engineer John Eckman said the expansion, planned for the northeast side of the building, would provide flexibility and could be used for an auditorium, gymnasium, an area for offices, or possibly classrooms.

Craig Huffman, Planning Commission chairman, and member Tom Bradley had issues because there were questions about the size of the congregation, the number of students, and whether there would be any anticipated growth, because growth would affect parking, water, and sewage use.

Concerns over the growth of the church and the school continue, even after the church went back to the Planning Commission in January. Members of the commission were not satisfied with the responses then, and they are still not satisfied.

Attorney Dennis Dunn representing Calvary said, “We’re here seeking land development approval for Phase III, but I think I should state we are again seeking land development approval for Phase III since land development approval for Phases 1 through III was already granted in 2008.”

He said that when he was before the commission in January, there were, what he thought, misconceptions, one of which is the notion that Phase III is something new.

He continued by stating that while there were some disputes over building the first two phases, eventually approvals were granted, and certificates of occupancy were granted.

He also said that a 2015 agreement included a provision for future school use, and that Calvary Chapel needed to get approval for that, “which it did.”

Dunn said Calvary applied for a certificate of occupancy for the school in 2019, and “The township issued the CO. No land development approval was required; it was sent for conditional use. Not an additional square foot of building was built at that point. The one thing that was coming through, to me anyway, in January, was a concept that Calvary Chapel had somehow snuck the school into this location. That didn’t happen; they got the CO.”

He emphasized that Phase III is not something new since it was already approved years earlier.

Over the course of the meeting, Dunn and others spoke for about an hour, eventually addressing some of the questions left over from the January meeting about parking, water and sewer use, and a nursery.

Architect Branda Hobbs said the nursery is only planned to be used as childcare during worship services.

Regarding plumbing fixtures, Dunn said that while 14 lavatories are required by building codes, seven for men and seven for women, a total of 26 are planned, 12 for men and 14 for women. And that is to accommodate 2,661 people in the building. “That’s more than twice what we ever have in this building. We don’t even get more than 1,000 for a regular Sunday service.”

Concerning the school, Innovate Academy, Dunn said the maximum number of students, pre-K through eighth grade, would be 270, roughly 10 percent of the maximum occupancy of Calvary Chapel.

“There is no nursery school,” he added.

With regard to sewage capacity, Calvary has an agreement with the Knights Bridge wastewater treatment plant that shows the plant will take 4,500 gallons of flow per day, which he said is far more than what DEP says is needed.

No traffic study has been submitted yet, Dunn said, but traffic engineer Guy DiMartino said he is in the process of finalizing a study based on comments from Pennoni Engineers, the township’s engineering firm.

“We have coordinated the specific scope of the traffic study, and we have performed all the necessary counts, and we will be submitting that study in the very near future. I have a draft on my desk that I have to review before submitting, but, looking at the results thus far, we are showing acceptable impacts.” DiMartino said.

Noise and light pollution have also been issues. Al Pinera, the director of operations for Calvary Chapel, said some of the sound issues related to live amplified music have been addressed by tweaking speakers down so there’s less bass, and that more trees are to be planted for an improved buffer between the church and the neighbors on Harvey Lane. Light and sound pollution, along with physical trespass, have been an issue for some of those neighbors.

As he wound down, Dunn said he will be back to clear up several issues, including DEP concerns, the traffic study, and the landscaping issue.

Then it was Commission Chairman Craig Huffman’s turn to express concerns. He said originally there was to be no school except for Sunday School.

“That testimony is in writing and it’s publicly available,” Huffman said when Dunn tried to interrupt.

Huffman also said, “There’s a very credible argument to be made that the church would not have been permitted to be built in phases if there was not a knowledge of what the ultimate uses of the church were going to be over time. Meaning that if you wanted to expand, you would have had to come back with another land use application later on, but Calvary wanted to have a phased-in approval at one time, and the testimony was that there’s not going to be a school.”

He continued by saying there had been noncompliance issues between the first two phases, and that what was presented for Phase II in 2015 was different than what was originally proposed and approved. That change had several classrooms being built, which led to litigation with an agreement that the church would not operate a school without approval, but the school started up in 2019. A certificate of occupancy was granted at the time, but “That CO was not consistent with the spirit of the agreement.”

Huffman added, “If Calvary Chapel, from my perspective, had honored the spirit of the agreement that was reached with the township in 2015, we would have come in on a land use application and we would have discussed parking requirements, sewage requirements, and all other requirements when they started operating the school in 2019 and we wouldn’t be dealing with it now with this level of acrimony.”

Other issues with Calvary include the church building in a conservation area, which they should have done.

“So, if we’re going to take a walk down memory lane, let’s take a walk all the way down and look at everything.”

But the next order of business was to look at the future to determine when Calvary Chapel will be back before the Planning Commission. A date was set for June 9.

About Rich Schwartzman

Rich Schwartzman has been reporting on events in the greater Chadds Ford area since September 2001 when he became the founding editor of The Chadds Ford Post. In April 2009 he became managing editor of ChaddsFordLive. He is also an award-winning photographer.