Plans to expand the Chinese Alliance Church from Lebreton Street onto Bell Street North is facing opposition from local residents.
The decision by city council this week to approve the church’s expansion plan means the Chinese Alliance Church will eventually expand its current building to include a gym/worship hall and a number of classrooms.
Neighbours say they’re worried about increased traffic on the narrow Bell Street North, a lack of parking, and the building being too big for the lots purchased, leaving only two metres between the expansion and neighbours’ houses on either side of the lot.
The property purchased by the church at 50 and 54 Bell St. N. is zoned for a low-rise apartment building and the expansion will be around 11 metres high, higher than any other building on the street.
Chin Huan Hung, who lives next door to the proposed site, says he’s worried about the lack of space between his house and the expansion. Standing on his porch, Hung says he can already hear a lot of noise coming from the church during operating hours.
With the new expansion, he says he will also have a large wall to stare at two metres from the side of his porch, and the new sloped roof dropping snow into his yard during the winter is a worry. A 25-spot underground parking garage that will be built underneath the expansion is meant to help alleviate some of the Parking issues.
Connie Brian, who lives across the street from the proposed site, says parking on the narrow Bell Street North is already terrible and a garage that can only be used by the church’s parishioners won’t help the situation.
Eric Darwin, president of the Dalhousie Community Association, says the purchase of 50 and 54 Bell St. N. for the expansion of the Chinese Alliance Church into a mega-church may be cheaper in the short-run, but in the long-run it will be inconvenient both for neighbours and for parishioners.
“If you are putting in a church that has a region-wide draw, it should be located on a major arterial, or in an industrial park, or in the sort of place where you can get a large number of people coming and going by car, driving in, parking, and leaving,” he says. “The local streets are no longer local streets, they become streets that people want to zoom in or zoom out when church service is over.”
Despite neighbours’ worries, Rev. Gerald Chan, the church’s senior pastor, says the expansion will not inconvenience residents .
Chan says that after some consultation with his future neighbours on Bell Street, they decided not to allow any access to the church through the side of the expansion facing Bell Street, easing the worries of neighbours.
“We understand the concerns, and we have addressed them by not allowing any access from Bell Street,” he says. “All the traffic will be coming from Eccles, same as now. The cars will be coming into our underground parking through our parking lot on Eccles.”
But Darwin, Hung, and Brian all agree that combined with past development in their neighbourhood, the Chinese Alliance Church’s expansion onto Bell Street is one more piece of the puzzle that will eventually change their neighbourhood from residential to institutional in nature.