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El Sobrante expansion plans move ahead, so does opposition
WSN Network

EL SOBRANTE: The Contra Costa County Planning Commission had cleared plans for expansion of the gurdwara to more than four times its current size but it seems that some of the area residents now are mulling over a move to appeal the ruling against expansion.

Most of the expansion was aimed at creating community assets such as a community center, an arts center, a museum and a parking garage. 

The El Sobrante is a core place for San Francisco Bay Area with a 6.5 acre property off Hillcrest Road in unincorporated El Sobrante. Right now, the gurdwara boasts of some 22,000 sq feet but expansion plans aould have taken it to some 70,000 sq feet. With the community needs rising and a more active engagement of the youth and children, many members of the community think the expansion had become imperative.

But the opposing area residents claim that since the sangat flow was not expected to increase by such a major factor, the expansion was not justified.

So far, the chairman of the expansion tasked panel, J.P. Singh, was a happy man after last Tuesday's meeting. and he had a reason. The plans had lingered on for nearly a decade already. However, concerns of the area residents regarding traffic, noise and the area's history of landslides, remain.

Incidentally, some opponents are trying to make capital of the fact that area residents have a significant black population.

"We would be hard-pressed to imagine a 70,000-square-foot expansion being built in the middle of a residential community in Walnut Creek or Danville," one opponent was quoted as saying in the media.

Sikhs of course point to the Mormon temple in the Oakland hills among other examples of large religious buildings surrounded by residential neighborhoods.

26 November 2008
 

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