Sierra Madre, nestled up against the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, has often been called the "Mayberry" of Southern California. The town of about 11,000 has two main streets, two coffee houses, one tea room, one fast food franchise, one post office, a couple of bars and nursery schools, half-a-dozen restaurants and an equal number of churches - and that's about it.

The big happening every year is the Wisteria Festival that celebrates a vine. Not any vine, mind you, but the 114-year-old, one-plus-acre wisteria vine, which the Guinness Book of World Records lists as the largest blooming plant and one of the seven horticultural wonders of the world.

The big inside joke of the Fourth of July parade every year is the Sierra Madre Community College Marching Band, which often leads the classic cars, fire engines and kids riding decorated bikes down Sierra Madre Boulevard. Of course, there is no community college in Sierra Madre. Just public and private elementary schools, St. Rita Elementary School and private all-girls' Alverno High School, which happens to have a two/thirds scale replica of a Tuscan-style villa in Florence, Italy, on its campus that supposedly was designed by Michelangelo.

And there's the rub that has normally placid Sierra Madre folks up in arms over their morning coffee at Bean Town and Starbucks.

For the last 20 years or so, Alverno has not only used the Villa del Sol d'Oro for dances and other school events but also has rented it out mostly on weekends for filming as well as weddings and receptions, birthday parties, retreats, galas plus city and community affairs.

Some neighbors in the upscale residential area say they have been putting up with noise, traffic and safety issues because of the villa's non-school uses during this period, lowering their quality of life in the foothill community. Alverno administrators and supporters say they need the extra revenue generated from renting out the villa to keep tuition relatively low, provide financial aid to needy students and maintain the private Catholic independent school, which receives no support from the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

So on September 8 the whole ball of wax landed right in the lap of the Sierra Madre City Council at its Tuesday evening session. At issue was a "Temporary Use Permit" (TUP) that would let Alverno keep using the villa for non-school events for at least a year.

More than 100 people filled the small chamber and spilled outside, waiting two hours before the matter was finally taken up. After lengthy testimonies from Alverno's principal, Ann Gillick, and a member of the high school's board of trustees, parents, alumnae, students as well as local residents finally got the chance to speak their minds.

'Reasonable limitations'
Cathy Synder was the first to walk to the podium and face the horseshoe arrangement of a half-dozen city council members. The Sierra Madre resident, who got married in the villa three years ago, said she came to the meeting to support the TUP.

"I feel I was very privileged to have my wedding reception at the villa," she declared. "I'm proud that as a resident of Sierra Madre we have a local facility as unique as the villa that can be used for weddings and wedding receptions. It's a wonderful historic structure."

Synder said she understood the concerns of some neighbors, but that she also knew Alverno and the city were proposing "reasonable limitations" on the villa's use while the city conducted noise and traffic studies of the area. "The Temporary Use Permit will allow time for all of the various issues to be fully studied," she said. "I believe that the TUP is a reasonable approach and one that you should support."

Pasadena resident Filippo Fanara, who had three daughters who graduated from Alverno, also asked the city council to allow the high school to have non-school functions in the villa. He said part of the mission of the school was to provide an affordable education for young women in the San Gabriel Valley.

"The school has been successful in delivering a quality education because it has the good fortune to have a venue as attractive, unique and sought after," he pointed out. "Who can claim an Italian villa on their campus? The folks who run the school recognized this fact a long time ago and were entrepreneurial in their management of the facilities. The site contributes to their ability to provide a good education at a reasonable tuition."

Later in the evening, an older man who had lived by the high school for many years but didn't want to give his name said people, in fact, had stopped complaining about the noise, traffic and, especially, the serving of alcohol at non-school events because the local police had more important things to do. He stressed that these were all real quality of life issues.

"We're relatively small in number, but we see our property already being devalued because of this commercial activity," he said. "It's a residential neighborhood. You do have a historical monument, but it need not be supported by commerce in our neighborhood."

Another neighbor, Robert Nydal, said as a veteran educator himself he appreciated Alverno's precarious financial situation of having to raise money in hard economic times. But he couldn't support the Temporary Use Permit, again, because of noise, traffic and, especially, safety considerations. He said the "accumulative effect" of school, sports, city and community events plus weddings and on-site filming were just too much on weekends.

"I have a four-year-old and a seven-year-old child," he noted. "There is potentially 500 people at the villa every weekend and they can be drinking hard alcohol for as much as four to five hours. That can mean drunk driving; that can mean really poor decision making."

Parents can't pay
Principal Gillick thought the city council session went well. She was especially pleased that the supporters of Alverno "took the high road and didn't get down and dirty" with their testimonies. Instead, they were honest and upright, and simply stated facts. Moreover, she was happy that the issue brought up over and over by the more than one dozen people who spoke in favor of the villa's non-school use was the revenue it generated.

"We've gotten more calls for financial aid because of the recession than we ever have," she told The Tidings. "We're an independent Catholic school. So that means we get no money from the Los Angeles Archdiocese or parishes or anybody. Independent private schools similar to us have tuition that's almost double our current $11,000. So we consider our whole school is on financial aid because of the low tuition that we're charging.

"And that's very hard for us, because our constituency is middle income, lower income coming from all over the San Gabriel Valley with some 28 percent getting financial aid or scholarships. Our enrollment right now is down to around 230 because the families we draw upon have felt the recession first."

About the issue of drinking at villa events, especially wedding receptions, Gillick was mystified. She explained that there's always a security guard on site along with an event coordinator "who is very much in control of excessive drinking." She said the Sierra Madre police have her home phone number plus the facilities director number.

"Do we get complaints about drunken behavior? No," she reported. "I haven't had one call about alcohol. Does the police department get complaints about drunken behavior? No. And that was published in the police report that was given last night at the city council meeting. During the last four years, they've gotten less than a dozen complaints - but none of them say anything about alcohol."

While the Temporary Use Permit is the immediate issue at stake, according to the principal, Alverno has also been working on a "Master Plan" to build a multi-purpose building and to reconfigure the softball and soccer fields to meet regulation sizes. This will also save money by not having to rent off-school locales for these sporting events and school plays.

In addition, the high school is also applying for a historical use permit for the villa, which is on Sierra Madre's historical landmark list. Hopefully, these two proposals will be processed and approved during the year covered by the Temporary Use Permit, if it passes. But she stressed that none of these improvements will involve expanding the property beyond its present 13.5 acres.

When asked what it will mean to Alverno High School if the TUP is not approved, Gillick was speechless for a moment. Then she replied, "It's huge. It's huge. It means a lack of revenue - up to maybe $100,000 a year. So it's just huge."

After taking more testimony on September 22, the Sierra Madre City Council promised to vote on whether or not to grant a Temporary Use Permit for the Villa del Sol d'Oro.