Guru Nanak Sikh Temple -Fairfield

First meeting for Gurdwara Sahib was held on 24th February, 1988 at Iqbal Singh Randhawa’s residence at 510 Silver Lake Drive, Fairfield, CA. Attendees for this meeting were Iqbal Singh Randhawa, Malkit Singh Dhillon, Bhupinder Singh Sandhu and Puran Singh Randhawa. At this meeting decision was made to establish a Gurdwara Sahib in Fairfield, California. From there on Hayer family also got involved in this project.

On 8th November, 1991 Bylaws for Guru Nanak Sikh Temple were filed and they were recorded on 17th June, 1992.

First Program was held on 17th June 1992 at 586 East Wigen Way, Suisun City, California. On 24th November, 1994 Guru Nanak Dev Ji’s Birthday was celebrated. The attendees for this ceremony were Hayer, Randhawa, Rattu, Mann, Nachhattar Sidhu, Bhupinder Sadhu, Malkit Dhillon & Manjit Purewal’s families. Harbhajan Dhillon and Sardool Kwatra were involved with bringing Granthies.

Historical facts of the Fairfield Gurudwara:

The Gurudwara property was purchased on January 24, 1994. There was a house on the property that had a life tenant living in it and three dilapidated barns with full of waste and farming debris. There was a local measure Proposition “A” in effect that prohibits commercial encroachment to the exclusive agricultural land use. This measure was the impediment to our development of the Sikh Temple on this property. This measure was due to be expire on December 31, 1995.

In view of the expiration of the Proposition “A” the Managing Committee of the Guru Nanak Sikh Temple at that time decided to delay the use permit application until after this prohibiting measure expiration. In the mean times, the Managing Committee decided to convert the existing barns into the Gurudwara building for the time being. During the conversion and remodeling barns into the Gurudwara building had many road blocks that we must overcome. These road bocks were the daunting task to convince the local farmers and county administration for us to remain in the exclusive agriculture zoning.

With support of the local sangat and cooperation of solano county officials, we were able to remodel these barns into the Gurudwara building and celebrate Vaisakhi of 1994 in these newly remodeled barns. Prior to this, we were having a once a month Sangrand event in a rental place. A few families of that time used to prepare langar in their homes and bring it to the rental place for sangat.

Because our property is in the exclusive agriculture zoning, getting use permit was an uphill battle. However, due to the concerted efforts of devoted and determined local sangat, we were able to obtain a use permit for the permanent Gurudwara building in February of 1999. After securing the use permit we had to demolish temporary structure and build the new permanent new building.