St. James the Great church services to move again, this time to Newport Beach Civic Center

By Hannah FryStaff Writer

March 25, 2016 3:49 PM PT

Parishioners of St. James the Great Episcopal Church in Newport Beach will move their Sunday services from a Costa Mesa art museum to the Newport Beach Civic Center beginning next weekend.

The congregation has held services at various locations since Bishop J. Jon Bruno’s announcement in May that the church’s site on Via Lido was being sold to Legacy Partners, which planned to develop luxury townhomes there. Less than a month later, parishioners held their last service in the church.

Initially, the congregation held Sunday services at a park near the Via Lido property, but then moved to the Gray Matter Museum of Art on East 17th Street in Costa Mesa for what was expected to be a rainy winter.

Now, the parishioners are moving again, this time to the Community Room at the Newport Civic Center, 100 Civic Center Drive. Services will be held there at 10 a.m. Sundays starting April 3.

Nearly a year after Bruno’s announcement, the sale of the church’s former site has not closed. The property remains tangled in a legal battle between Bruno and Griffith Co., which owned the property before it was transferred to the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles in 1945.

Hannah Fry

Hannah Fry covers breaking news for the Los Angeles Times. She most recently covered Orange County for The Times and has written extensively about criminal trials, housing, politics and government. In 2020, Fry was part of the team that was a Pulitzer finalist for its coverage of a boat fire that killed 34 people off the coast of Santa Barbara. Fry came to The Times from the Daily Pilot, where she covered coastal cities, education and crime. An Orange County native, Fry started her career as an intern at the Orange County Register.