Chabad battles government and community over preschool location

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The saga over where a Chabad preschool in Pacific Palisades will be located has grown more complicated since we wrote about it in May. Note that it includes players all the way up to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. (Chabad posted a response to our most recent story on their website.)

For the last eight years, Chabad has leased land in Temescal Gateway Park from the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy. Chabad used the land for its Palisades Jewish Early Childhood Center. At the time, such deals to rent public land to private parties were used to help maintain the 20-acre park.

Chabad renewed its lease multiple times, despite lease provisions that said ‘LANDLORD and TENANT agree that there will be no extensions to this Agreement.’ The extensions have drawn the ire of local activists and community groups which say Chabad is trying to co-opt public land for private use. (The land was acquired by the conservancy in the 1990s to serve urban youth education programs.

On Monday, the conservancy board will hold an emergency meeting to vote on whether the school may continue to operate in the park until the end of January. In effect, that would extend the lease agreement, which expired June 23, for the fourth time. (Here are links to previous lease agreements that were renewed so that Chabad could find a new location for its preschool.)

Conservancy Executive Director Joe Edmiston sent an e-mail to board members and a local activist on June 26. In it, he wrote:

Read on...

Chabad, a religious group that practices Orthodox Jewish Hasidim, has a contentious reputation within the mainstream Jewish community, and has had some zoning conflicts in residential neighborhoods where it has tried to establish its gathering spots.

In April, Chabad looked at moving to a new location in the Castellammare area of the Palisades and worked out an agreement with a resident there to lease a building at the back of his property near the Getty Villa and a Mormon church. But that soon backfired when the Getty said the group was using its service road. Getty asked whether Chabad had the proper permits (they didn’t), and expressed concern over the safety of children on the sharply winding road.

So Rabbi Zushe Cunin, who heads Chabad of the Palisades, applied for another extension from the conservancy, saying the group needed to remain in Temescal while it sorted out the situation at its new location, and while it applied for the proper permit (Chabad’s attorney Benjamin Reznik said they will probably file for the permit next week).

Edmiston denied the renewal request. In an e-mail, Cunin agreed to vacate the property and asked Edmiston to consider a short-term rental through January. That too was denied. Since then, Schwarzenegger has gotten into the mix, asking the state’s resources agency chief Mike Chrisman to ‘personally respond’ to Chabad’s request.

Chrisman provided Chabad with a ‘terms and conditions’ form that committed the group to securing a bond of $250,000 to guarantee its departure from the premises by the end of January. The conditions also included paying rent from June 23 through January 2009. Also attached were guidelines for applying for a formal application to the conservancy. Chabad sent the conservancy its formal appeal to renew the lease this week.

‘This is really temporary in nature,’ Cunin said. ‘This time, unlike other times, we have a location. We have a place to go to, we just need a little more time to make the transition.’

But to where? The new location is embroiled in its own battles. Cunin and Reznik say they examined city planning files and found that Chabad may have a legal access to the property: it turns out there was a dedicated public easement granted about 20 years ago, along a portion of the Getty’s service road and the Mormon church’s property. Councilman Bill Rosendahl said the Bureau of Engineering and the city attorney’s office is investigating the claim.

Cunin said the permit process for the new location should take about six to eight months and allow the group to leave Temescal Canyon after Chabad’s extended lease expires. But local activists believe the permit process will take far longer and will only result in another renewal.

‘Any property in the Palisades ... even if it’s straightforward, it takes years,’ said Randy Young, a local historian and park activist. ‘To think that this is happening by January, there’s some heavy magical thinking going on here. The Coastal Commission process alone and the CEQA documents have to be reviewed and there have to be hearings.’

--Tami Abdollah

Photo: Rabbi Zushe Cunin of the Chabad of Pacific Palisades, next to son Zalmen, 4, is working to find a new home for the organization’s preschool outside of Temescal Gateway Park. Credit: Al Seib / Los Angeles Times.