After years of heated debate and legal challenges, a proposed mega-church in Del Cerro is one step closer to becoming a reality. The project cleared a key hurdle at city council. NBC 7’s Shelby Bremer reports.
A controversial proposal to build a large church in Del Cerro will move forward after the San Diego City Council voted Tuesday night to approve the development, reversing course more than a year after initially voting the project down.
After hours of comment, the council voted 5-4 to green light the project. In 2017, all Peoples Church purchased the 6-acre site along College Avenue near Interstate 8, with plans to construct a more than 50,000-square-foot church, a parking structure and more on what’s currently vacant land.
“It is a terrible idea to put a massive religious campus alongside an already congested avenue,” one person said during public comment, which drew many concerned residents with signs and grew heated at times.
All Peoples Church Pastor Robert Herber declined an interview request but said in a statement after the vote that the church was “praising God for this incredible outcome.”
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“We are truly grateful to the city and the council for the decision today to allow our church to be built on our property,” Herber’s statement continued. “It’s been a long journey, and difficult for everyone. We are committed to being great neighbors and serving the community and the City we love in every way possible.”
“It’s just too big. It creates safety issues. It’s a very difficult intersection down there,” Michael Livingston with the group Save Del Cerro said.
The organization formed seven years ago in response to the project, he said, and took particular issue with the project’s environmental impact report.
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“We have our objectives, and they don't include this large, intense commercial use because religious assembly use is under the commercial zoning code,” Livingston said.
The development was brought for a vote by the city council in January 2024 and failed by a 6-2 vote against. All People’s Church subsequently filed a federal lawsuit alleging its First Amendment rights were violated.
“The denial of this project was not an attack on religious freedom. It was a responsible decision based on traffic environmental and safety concerns,” one commenter said at city council Tuesday night.
Still, Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera conceded the specter of a protracted legal battle played a factor in Tuesday’s vote.
“There are real costs associated with that,” Elo-Rivera said. “Libraries that will have to be shuttered, folks that will have to live in fear of losing their jobs and key services that we will have to make really tough decisions about.”
Livingston argued the project was not accurately represented to the council or the community, particularly on traffic impact.
“Most people are most concerned about the safety of the Del Cerro and College intersection, about the exit from the freeway ramps and the people coming flying downhill,” he said.
“Regardless of whether the church goes in, we need to do something about this intersection anyway,” Nick Wolf said.
His home backs up to the property, and he said he supports the construction of the church.
“I was worried that potentially, you know, you could have dorms go up there from San Diego State because it is an empty lot,” he said. “I would rather have a church than a vacant lot — an empty, vacant lot that's been dumped in.”
Wolf said he does not belong to the church but appreciated their outreach to neighbors when the work on the project began.
“I think that, in the end, once all is said and done, I think they're going to be great neighbors,” Wolf said, adding the fight has been “kind of a strain on the community.”
Livingston said he believed the reversal of the vote following the lawsuit set a concerning precedent that extends well beyond his own neighborhood.
“You have, you know, sophisticated lawyers and people who are going to see this as an opportunity, and they're going to factor in it from the beginning of their project,” Livingston said. “They're not going to say at the end, ‘Well, we could sue them.’ They're going to say, ‘If we don't get this, we can sue because it's already been done. It's here. We can just see what they did in Del Cerro and apply that.’”
When asked about the timeline for construction, the church – currently operating out of a temporary location in La Mesa – said it was “still trying to digest yesterday’s decision.”
“Given the inadequate nature of their interim site, the desire would be to get the new church built and open as soon as possible, but the timing of that is really not known at the moment,” the church said.
Livingston said Save Del Cerro was exploring next steps as well.
“We're, you know, considering our options and just to see what else, you know, might be available to us, what kind of negotiation we might be able to enter into with them to, you know, not have this project be built,” he said. “It's just too intense.”
