Anaheim Neighbors to Appear Against Proposed College Campus for Retarded

Neighborhood foes of a college for artistically gifted mentally retarded people will present their case to a special meeting of the Anaheim City Council tonight.

Anaheim’s Planning Commission last month approved a bid by the Hope University-UNICO National College to open a campus on what now is the Euclid Street Baptist Church property in the Anawood area. Approval was granted over the objections of church neighbors, who expressed concern that the college’s presence would hurt property values. The decision was appealed to the City Council.

The institution’s officers call it the only private fine arts college for mentally retarded people in the country. Don R. Simmons, the church’s associate pastor, termed the residents’ concern “irrational prejudice against mentally retarded people.”

Land Would Be Swapped

The college program would be situated on the church site under an arrangment involving UNICO International, an Italian-American service organization. The service organization will give the church 30 to 40 acres in the Anaheim Hills where the church wants to build a new church and elementary school, Simmons said. The church would then provide its 2.9-acre site on Euclid Street in Anaheim for the college.

Church officials also have their own appeal to make tonight. Last month, the Planning Commission ordered the church to shut down its eight-year-old day-care and elementary school programs by June 30 because they have been operating without a permit. The church had requested a three-year phase-out period.

Simmons said that the school has not been operating illegally because the church has a permit to operate its church and church-related activities. “We certainly looked at a Christian school as being a church-related activity,” he said.

But residents who have collected more than 300 signatures and letters to protest any school on the site say church activities have gotten out of hand. Neighbors complain that the church school, which has about 260 students in buildings at 1408 S. Euclid Street, has created traffic and noise problems.

Congestion Feared

“The noise has been atrocious and our neighbors have been complaining for years,” said Dorothy Rubin, a longtime resident of Chanticleer Road. Rubin and others fear the congestion will continue if Hope University is allowed to take over the church site.

Rubin also said neighbors are “very concerned that our property values will drop.” She expressed particular fear about a Planning Commission condition that will allow the college to build residential units for 100 mentally retarded people.

Currently, the college has 37 students who meet in two rooms of the Brookhurst Shopping Center and once a week in the Trinity United Methodist Church, said Doris E. Walker, Hope executive director. Most of the students live with their families, she said.

The college program is an offshoot of a group that originated under the Anaheim Union High School District’s “Hi Hopes” performing program. Walker said. Once the musically talented students graduated from high school, however, there was no place for them to go, she said. The college, which opened officially in 1980, is slated to become a model the UNICO service group wants to emulate across the country, Walker said.

Walker called the proposal under discussion here “absolutely the pioneering cutting edge” in fine arts education for mentally retarded people.

Site Called ‘Too Small’

But resident Corinne Newell, whose home directly abuts the church property, said the site is too small for a campus and would not provide the students recreational space.

“I believe that it is cruel what they are proposing,” Newell said. “What a dreadful thing to do to people. They should have more space to move around.”

Informed of Newell’s comments, Walker said she was “very touched that they have an interest in our students, but I think it’s a little misplaced since they’ve never bothered to learn anything about them.”

The meeting, scheduled by officials in the evening by special request, will begin at 7 p.m. in City Hall, 200 S. Anaheim Boulevard.