Wayfarers Chapel may soon find a new location, but about a year after the landmark church in Rancho Palos Verdes was dismantled because of land movement damage, several challenges remain, so its eventual rebirth is still a ways off — potentially even years away.

Church and city officials, though, say they are optimistic about a potential new site that overlooks the Pacific Ocean at the Ken Dyda Civic Center and boasts views of the Point Vicente Lighthouse, which is listed in the National Register of Historic Places, like the chapel, and Catalina Island.

Robert Carr, who took over as interim administrator of Wayfarers earlier this year, said in a recent interview that the proposed site being close to “rugged coast cliffs and coastal views” is ideal.

“It’s a perfect fit with our goal of preserving the experience that everybody will have when they come to the rebuilt chapel,” Carr said. “It also should be a great fit for our goal of preserving our National Historic Landmark status. Those guidelines call for when relocation is necessary, they call for the new site to be similar to the old site in these characteristics.”

Severe land movement following rainstorms in the winters of 2022 and 2023 began damaging the chapel, forcing it to close in February 2024. The chapel’s closure was among he biggest shocks to the Peninsula as residents and officials dealt with the fallout of land movement in Rancho Palos Verdes. The wood-and-glass chapel, which was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright Jr. and opened in 1951, had to cancel 260 weddings.

In June 2024, when the church was being dismantled, some areas of the Rancho Palos Verdes landslide complex were shifting as much as 12 inches per week. After the chapel was taken down, the remains of the structure were stored at a secure location until a new home was found. The structure remains in storage.

That’s because, even though church and city officials have identified a new spot, they must first secure the site and raise enough money to rebuild the chapel.

Rebuilding the chapel, Carr said, “should not and will not cost the city anything.”

Currently, the city is facing its own financial challenges because of the havoc caused by land movement, which continues to cost Rancho Palos Verdes millions of dollars to repair the continually damaged Palos Verdes Drive South and other city infrastructure.

“That’s really all on Wayfarers Chapel shoulders,” Carr said about raising funds. “We’re just starting that process. We’ve always been good fiscal managers of our own accounts. We had saved up some substantial amounts of money to renovate the chapel, and so we have some funds in hand that can help as kind of a kick-start, a major pot of money for our rebuilding.”

The chapel, Carr said, will look to a combination of private donors and grant writing organizations, as well as government sources to help fill the funding gap.

The total cost of rebuilding would be $25 million to $30 million, Carr said, and would probably be done in phases.

“To do a Phase 1 build out of at least the chapel and the bell tower, and creating some very attractive grounds right next to them, that would be more on the order of $10 to $15 million,” Carr said. “That’s a number that we’re very confident that we should be able to get to in the next year or two. We could start reconstruction as soon as the site comes available.”

That’s where the city comes in.

Four acres of land would need to be transferred from the United States Coast Guard to the city, including the Battery Barnes, a bunker named in honor of World War I veteran and former Army Col. Harry C. Barnes.

Land transfers are nothing new to Rancho Palos Verdes.

The proposed site was established by the U.S. Army as a Nike-Ajax launch site in the 1950s but was deactivated in 1974. A year later, the city leased the Army barracks and other facilities to RPV. More than 60 acres of land was then acquired from the federal government in 1979 through the Federal Lands to Parks Program.

As for the 4 acres Wayfarers Chapel would need, Carr said, the Coast Guard has indicated it could take five to 10 years for the transfer to occur.

“We would like the Coast Guard and the federal government to accelerate that,” Carr said in a June 9 interview, “and see if they can’t get that transfer to occur, hopefully, within the next year, year and a half.”

Carr and Rancho Palos Verdes Mayor David Bradley sent a joint letter to Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Los Angeles, on May 23 asking him to “help us identify and access federal discretionary funding to support the relocation and rebuilding” of Wayfarers, which the National Park Service deemed a National Historic Landmark in December 2023.

The letter referenced the proposed site’s history in helping defend the coast during World War II and its namesake being a World War I veteran.

“(The site) reflects the Peninsula’s rich military heritage — a heritage that the city and Wayfarers Chapel are committed to honoring through a dedicated museum and educational exhibits at the new Civic Center campus,” the letter said. “Because this prospective site is similar in many aspects to the chapel’s ‘heritage site,’ including dimensions, micro-climate and views, the National Park Service has given assurances that the National Historic Registry designation could be retained, making the reconstruction of Wayfarers Chapel on Battery Barnes a tremendous opportunity for the city and the whole of the Peninsula.

“As a veteran yourself,” the letter added, “we hope you will see the importance of preserving this site, not only as a place of architectural and historical significance, but also as a living memorial to service members who protected our coastline.”

Officials have a “new vision” for the site, according to the letter, which includes not only the return of Wayfarers, but also a museum, cafe, interpretive visitor center, public trails, open space and educational native plant gardens the will “celebrate the local ecology and protect endangered species like the Palos Verdes blue butterfly.”

“Wayfarers Chapel has always been a place that welcomes all wayfarers,” the letter said, “regardless of their faith to commune with nature and each other to form lasting community bonds.”

RPV, meanwhile, had a preliminary meeting with the Coast Guard on June 2, said city spokesperson Megan Barnes.

“We gave them a site tour and discussions are ongoing,” Barnes in a Tuesday text message.

Architectural Resources Group, which dismantled Wayfarers, was hired earlier this year to conduct a preliminary site plan, Carr said.

“We did a lot of work with ARG in February, March, April,” Carr said, “and the results showed that it is a fantastic site for rebuilding.”

Bradley publicly unveiled the first renderings of the potential site for Wayfarers Chapel during the annual State of the Peninsula event on May 14.

The renderings were done in a “painterly effect,” Carr said, but are “based on hard science.”

“They are based on laser scanning of the landscape and the topography, I think, just a few inches of accuracy and absolutely exact architectural design and layout,” Carr said, “showing that the chapel can fit really well right there on that southern edge of the hilltop.”

The location is also safe for construction, according to a February 2023 geotechnical report done for the preliminary conceptual plan for the Civic Center Campus Master Plan Project.

The city was in the beginning stages of developing a new Civic Center, including a city hall, when the land movement diverted its priorities.

While the site is “subject to strong ground shaking, as is the case for most Southern California,” an October 2023 staff report said, it is “not located within a currently designated liquefaction hazard zone.” Below the surface, the site is composed of hard clay and silt, and shallow bedrock, the staff report said.

“It’s as solid of a ground as you could hope for in terms of land movement,” Carr said on Monday, adding there will be further geotechnical testing. “Also, bedrock is the best thing to build on top of for earthquakes.”

The next step for Wayfarers will take place this summer when an architectural firm will be hired for “much more detailed design work this fall for our potential campus,” Carr said.

That will also give chapel officials a more detailed estimate of how much it will cost to rebuild Wayfarers.

Wayfarers has had offers to be moved to other sites in California, Pennsylvania and Canada. But officials remain steadfast in staying on the Peninsula.

The Wayfarers board and the city, Carr and Bradley said in their letter to Lieu, “remain deeply committed to keeping Wayfarers Chapel rooted in Rancho Palos Verdes, where it has been a beloved part of the community for generations.”