The North Shearer Hills Neighborhood Association says its membership has been galvanized in opposition to the planned construction of five new homes that will house 25 priests and seminarians.

It might be unusual for a neighborhood to take a not-in-my-backyard stand against a religious order, but association president Lydia Rodriguez said residents are opposed for a host of reasons that will sound familiar: gentrification, potential increases in appraisals and tax bills, and architectural designs that clash with existing aesthetics.

“I just don’t trust these priests, I’m sorry,” Rodriguez said. “It’s making me crazy. I’ve lost sleep over this.”

Alack of transparency is adding to the anger, she said. A chain-link fence that went up a few weeks ago was their first inkling that the Washington-based U.S. Province of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate planned to demolish four existing single-family houses.

In their place will be five two-story, dormitorylike homes built at a reported cost of a half-million dollars each.

Some residents of the quiet north-central area adjacent to the Oblate School of Theology, worried about decades of cases of sexual abuse of children by priests and related coverups of those crimes, also say they’re worried about the children who live in the area, including group homes that house special needs children.

It didn’t help that the new relationship between Father Ray John Marek of the Oblates’ Washington headquarters and the neighborhood, which is full of retirees and more than a few Catholics, never gelled.

“At first he said, ‘This is private property, and we can do whatever we want with it,’” Rodriguez said. “I’m a hothead, and I said, ‘Father, you just try it.’”

She added, “We’re upset also because they didn’t tell us, and then they lied to us.”

Marek, who came to San Antonio Feb. 29 to meet with the neighborhood group, said the order has worked hard to fulfill every rule, regulation and permit required by law.

The Oblates didn’t know of the existence of the Shearer Hills group, otherwise he would have contacted neighbors, he said.

“We’re trying to make it an improvement to the neighborhood,” Marek said. “We have been in that neighborhood long before the neighborhood was there.”

Marek said Oblates and priests from other orders have resided in the neighborhood quietly and respectfully. About references to pedophilia, Marek was unequivocal.

“We’ve worked hard after these allegations of the situation in the church came to light,” he said. “We have been working very hard to protect everyone to who we minister.”

Marek said a few residents see the project as a neighborhood improvement and spoke in favor of it. Rodriguez concurred but said they were in the minority.

Carlos Rodriguez, an architect who has lived in the area since 2008, said the biggest problem has been the order’s evolving story about who will live in the new homes.

In November, the Oblates issued a news release about its groundbreaking that said seminarians, young men preparing for the priesthood, would live there. Marek said Wednesday that priests and even retired priests also might live in the homes.

“They specifically said seminarians will live there temporarily,” Carlos Rodriguez said. “They already have dormitories for their seminarians over there (at the Oblate campus). I’m not sure why they’re not just adding on more there.”

He also said the Oblates have referred to the new development as a compound and “that only one of the buildings would have a kitchen.”

Marek said every home will have a kitchen.

Rodriguez, who’s not related to the president of the association, said he has a problem “with five half-million-dollar homes that are going to look exactly the same,” in an area where the housing stock reflects a variety of architectural styles and home values run between $200,000 and $240,000.

He said elderly homeowners who aren’t able to keep up with repairs are especially vulnerable to gentrification and the kinds of newer development the new structures might trigger.

Demolition is set to being soon, and construction will be completed in a year, Marek said.

Bexar County chief appraiser Michael Amezquita said property owned by religious orders likely will be tax-exempt and might not affect the appraised values of neighbors if no improvements are made on their properties. Also, at age 65, their property tax bill is frozen, officials said.

Appraisals are affected by market values and, as with other desirable areas inside Loop 410, home prices are going up in general, Amezquita said.

District 1 Councilman Roberto Treviño, in whose district the area falls, said the religious order “at least from our side” has fulfilled every requirement to build the five homes.

“I know the neighborhood is concerned about changing the size of structures, and that someday they may become multi-family structures,” he said.

At this point, Treviño said, he was encouraging residents and the order to build “better and constant communication, because they are neighbors.”

“Now it’s just a matter of feeling good about what’s happening.”

eayala@express-news.net