Aliso Viejo Finds $15-Million Gift Tempting

Two months after neighboring Mission Viejo rejected the same proposal, the Aliso Viejo City Council wants to accept an offer by a church-connected charitable foundation to build a $15-million recreation center.

The 82,000-square-foot center would feature a basketball gym and office and meeting space for several nonprofit organizations, including a Boys & Girls Club.

The center would be available for public use but owned and operated by the Gabrielson Foundation, which was established last year by Steve and Lynn Gabrielson of Aliso Viejo with the intent of building such a facility.

Much of the foundation’s money was donated anonymously, the couple said.

Lynn Gabrielson is pastor of the Pacific Center for Positive Living church in Lake Forest, and she, along with three other church members, serve on the foundation’s five-member board of directors.

The only condition of the gift is that the church be allowed to use the recreation center on Sundays. Aliso Viejo’s city attorney is studying whether such a condition jeopardizes the deal before the City Council gives its final approval.

Concern about the church’s connection to the gift led the Mission Viejo City Council to reject a similar offer.

To avoid a possible city-church conflict, the foundation has agreed that no more than two members of the Pacific Center church be allowed to serve on the foundation’s board of directors. Additionally, two other foundation board members will be appointed by the Aliso Viejo mayor and the president of the Capistrano Valley Boys & Girls Club.

The building would be on 7 acres of what was once a sheep ranch near Moulton and Alicia parkways. The facility would be across the street from Aliso Viejo Middle School, whose students could make up much of the membership of the Boys & Girls Club.

Rancho Mission Viejo donated the property in 2002 to the city, which entered into an agreement with the Aliso Viejo Community Assn. to develop the property for recreational use. After a series of public meetings, the community association decided to develop the property as a park.

The City Council, dissatisfied with that plan, voted to take the property back after the foundation proposed building the recreation center.

Under terms of the proposal, the foundation would lease the land for $1 a year but would pay the city $250,000 during each of the first two years for use of the site. The foundation would also pay to move a historic bunkhouse and barn into a heritage plaza and preserve them.

The recreation center’s tenants -- including the Braille Institute, American Red Cross, the Center for Hope and Healing family counseling service, a preschool and the church -- will help pay for its operation and maintenance.

Aliso Viejo Mayor William “Bill” Phillips said the deal sounded too good to be true.

“Nobody has given the city that kind of change before,” he said. “It is a pretty outstanding amenity for the community. It’s a very unique opportunity, one that I felt we had to pursue.”

The center will also be available for community theater productions and youth and adult sports and open, unscheduled play. “We see this as a good community asset,” Phillips said. “The Boys & Girls Club makes it especially attractive because it would provide various programs for all the kids. We need to have as many of those types of programs as we can get.”

The foundation had offered to build the recreation center in Mission Viejo at the Thomas R. Potocki Conference Center and on a field at the World Cup Soccer Center. But some Mission Viejo council members said the site was more valuable as soccer fields. In January, that council rejected the Potocki site and directed staff to help the foundation find an alternate site.

The foundation began looking at other sites in Mission Viejo and Laguna Niguel before learning of the disagreement in Aliso Viejo over the use of community association parkland.

Last week, the Aliso Viejo City Council voted 5 to 0 to tentatively accept the offer, pending the city attorney’s report. The facility would be across the street from Aliso Viejo Middle School.

Foundation co-founder Steve Gabrielson, president of a Newport Beach accounting firm, discounted the church’s role in the gift. “The church is a minor part of this whole thing,” he said. “Our church is not the group building this facility. It’s the foundation, and the foundation is not controlled by the church.”

Lance MacLean, the only Mission Viejo City Council member who backed the project in his city, said Aliso Viejo’s gain is a big loss for Mission Viejo.

“I coach eighth-grade basketball, and we practice in Rancho Santa Margarita and Laguna Hills,” he said. “We need a gym like no other, and this was a $15-million gift. What are we going to do now? Spend money to build a gym when we could have had one for free?”