Business & Tech

Hot Springs Treads Cautiously on Expansion

Plans to add four buildings to the resort-like conference center will depend on the economy, management said on a recent tour of the grounds.

Though the hot springs that put Murrieta on the map are nestled behind the gates of Calvary Chapel Conference Center, the management says they are still a benefit to the community.

The conference center, also home to a two-year bible program, draws visitors and students from around the world.

“This is like a little city. We probably almost single-handedly support the businesses around here,” said Director Rod Thompson, motioning to newer strip malls located across the street.

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Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa purchased the property in the mid-90s for $6 million, and since then has taken it from a dilapidated, bank-owned state to a thriving part of the Murrieta community. The natural hot spring pools were nearly dried up from lack of maintenance, those being one of the first improvements the church made.

From the beginning, longtime employee Karl Bentz has seen the property progress into what it is today. He started working there in 1995, and is now the project development manager. He remembers when the hills across from the center were full of roaming sheep.

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“It was a real depressed period of time for the area; this was all boarded up,” Bentz said.

Many of the buildings had to be gutted before they could be used. History accounts show the property originated as a resort in 1902, built by Fritz Guenther. Prior to that, local Native Americans and travelers, who often camped near the hot springs, used it. By the 1920s, Guenther’s Murrieta Hot Springs was known throughout California as a tourist destination, according to murrieta.org.

One local, Annie Borel, whose family has been farming the French Valley area since the 1880s, said her great-grandmother used to sell turkeys and eggs to the resort.

“At the turn of the century, the resort had 1,000 employees,” Borel said.

The property changed hands several times after 1950.

For the most part it remained a publicly-accessible venue for dances, swimming and movies, according to another local, Mary Kean.

Kean remembers going to many events there as a young adult.

Borel remembers when “The Dating Game” would send contestants for a stay at the resort.

Now, the conference center is making plans to further improve the grounds by tearing down an old maintenance center and building a new one on the upper level. The upper level area, which borders homes in the Murrieta Hot Springs retirement community, has for years been more of a maintenance yard.

According to Thompson, the new layout will appease those neighbors.

“One of their concerns has been the noise and dust. What we decided to do to help those neighbors out is move the buildings away from the homes. We want to keep it as clean as possible and do it in such a way to affect them as little as possible,” Thompson said.

Owners of nearby condominiums, which are sandwiched between the west end of the center and Murrieta Hot Springs Road, also expressed concern that a shared access road needed improvements, Thompson said. The outcome was that the center agreed to maintain the road.

There are also plans to build a and a 50,000-square-foot sports center.

Thompson noted that those plans are part of later phases, which will be rolled out as the economy hopefully improves. The center used to serve many large groups; now it is serving smaller groups but at a higher density.

The City at a recent hearing approved the conference center’s preliminary expansion plans.

“Now we are entitled to be able to do it, but we are not going to rush into it in this economic environment.”

The springs, which management said reach 150 degrees and are the hottest in the Southland, trickle down into a lake on the property, eventually reaching a pond at the city-owned Pond Park. At the entrance to the park, off Murrieta Hot Springs Road, sits a memorial statue of resort-founder Fritz Guenther as a small tribute to the property’s heritage.


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