Drive past Rancho Palos Verdes City Hall and you will pass four empty acres of coastal bluff next to a boarded-up World War II bunker. Wayfarers Chapel has architectural renderings ready, a nature preserve lined up as its future next-door neighbor, and a congregation that has kept meeting for more than two years without a building.
The proposed rebuild would use four acres of Coast Guard land, and a transfer to the city remains pending.
What Actually Happened to the Chapel
Wayfarers Chapel closed to the public in February 2024 after the ground beneath its bluffside site began moving faster than engineers could manage. The closure canceled 175 already-booked weddings and events over the following eight months. By May 2024, the chapel's board had made the harder call: rather than let a National Historic Landmark crack apart panel by panel, they would take it apart on their own terms. The dismantling was complete by September 2024, with thousands of pieces, glass, redwood beams, and steelwork catalogued and moved into storage on stable ground nearby.
The timing carries its own irony. The chapel earned National Historic Landmark status in December 2023, one of only 2,600 structures in the country to hold that designation. Two months later it closed for good at the site that had just earned it.
The Fundraising Number Is the One Everyone Can Picture
Ask most Peninsula residents what is holding up the rebuild and they will guess money. They are not wrong that it matters. Chapel leadership has said reassembling the building alone will take at least $10 million. A full campus, with a visitor center, café, and gardens, adds another $20 million on top of that. Thirty million dollars is a real hurdle.
It is also the part of this project with a familiar shape. Capital campaigns get built. Boards hire consultants, donors write checks, timelines get set. The proposed land transfer is another major project dependency.
The Proposed Coast Guard Land Transfer
The site the chapel wants sits on Battery Barnes, a former World War II coastal defense installation on the grounds of the Ken Dyda Civic Center next to City Hall, about a mile west of the chapel's original bluff. The parcel runs roughly four acres, 4.6 by the chapel's own count, and still belongs to the United States Coast Guard, which has kept it in what officials describe as a divestiture process for years. A five-thousand-square-foot subterranean bunker sits on the land, unused since the war it was built to help fight.
None of that land changes hands without an act of Congress. In January 2026, Representative Ted Lieu told the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee that he planned to introduce legislation authorizing a transfer of the property to the city. Rancho Palos Verdes Mayor Paul Seo told Patch: "While no commitments or agreements are in place, securing a land transfer is a critical step toward making this vision a reality."
As of the chapel's most recent public project update, posted in February 2026, Battery Barnes is still described in its own materials as a "prospective" location. The land transfer remains pending, so construction there has not begun.
National Historic Landmark Status
The land transfer is not the only piece of government process attached to this project. National Historic Landmark status is not automatically preserved when a structure is dismantled and rebuilt elsewhere. Chapel executive director Dan Burchett has said the review committee that oversees the designation agreed to treat this situation as unique and to work with the chapel to protect its status through the move. The designation review is separate from the land transfer. Both processes remain unresolved while the chapel's dismantled materials remain in storage.
Why This Particular Piece of Land
The site was not a random pick. Wayfarers' administrative director, Robert Carr, told LAist: "The coastal views and the hilltop location match the original location in an uncanny way." Battery Barnes sits within view of the Point Vicente Lighthouse and is bordered on nearly every side by a preserve managed by the Palos Verdes Peninsula Land Conservancy, home to the endangered Palos Verdes Blue Butterfly.
Rancho Palos Verdes has owned a cluster of unused military buildings near City Hall for years. The proposed campus would create a public destination with a museum inside the old bunker and give the chapel a stable hillside for its rebuild. The plan depends on a land transfer.
What Comes Back If the Land Transfer Happens
The plan the chapel and city have sketched out includes:
- The rebuilt chapel and bell tower, reassembled from the original catalogued materials
- A museum inside the preserved bunker, focused on the site's military and maritime history
- A café, public restrooms, and an interpretive visitor center
- Public trails and native plant gardens connecting to the surrounding preserve
That is a longer list than "rebuild the church," which explains part of why the price tag runs to $30 million. It also explains why the Battery Barnes plan is not a stopgap someone could swap for a faster, smaller site elsewhere on the hill. It is meant to replace what the chapel was for seven decades, a place that hosted as many as 800 weddings a year in its best seasons, including those of Brian Wilson and Jayne Mansfield, and the only religious building included in the Museum of Modern Art's 1953 exhibition on postwar American architecture.
Where the Congregation Meets Right Now
The chapel has not gone dark while it waits. Sunday gatherings continue by video, with an in-person option at St. Francis Chapel on Via Rosa in Palos Verdes Estates for anyone who wants to show up. A new Tuesday evening session is set to launch later in 2026. It is a small detail, but it tells you something the fundraising totals do not. The congregation itself has kept functioning without a building. Only the building has been stuck.
What to Watch
Milestones to watch include congressional action on the land transfer Lieu proposed and a decision from the landmark review committee on how the National Historic Landmark status carries over to a new address. Once Battery Barnes actually changes hands, the architectural design work Carr expected in 2025 to have finished by the following winter can move from renderings toward permits. Until then, the chapel's materials remain in storage while the land transfer and landmark review are pending.
For residents who have watched this Peninsula landmark for years, that kind of patience is familiar. It is the same patience this stretch of coastline asks of anyone paying close attention to it, whether the question is a chapel's future or a home's.
If you are weighing your own next move on the Palos Verdes Peninsula and want someone who tracks details like these the way she tracks comps, Theresa Bruno has been a South Bay local since 1984 and is glad to talk through what is actually happening in the neighborhoods she serves.
