When Construction Never Stops (or Re-Starts)

City, Castellammare Neighbors Powerless to Complete a House 10 years in the Making

The house at 17484 Tramonto Dr. is 4,000-square-feet, pink, three stories tall and made of stucco. But that’s not how neighbors describe it. They prefer “the never-ending nightmare next door.” Construction began at the steep Castellammare site, which looks south over Santa Monica Bay, 10 years ago last month; but the house owned by Hans Schollhammer is still incomplete. There are open trenches in the front yard where utility lines are supposed to lie. Windows are broken, boarded or both. Loose conduits lie haphazardly. The front door is covered with pierced paper-board. Rebar and PVC protrude from a smashed–or is it half-finished?–concrete pillar. For several years while the house has lain vacant, near completion and under siege–literally–from vermin and vandals, neighbors have faced a dilemma: What do you do when a homeowner, for all intents and purposes, lets his house go? In the summer of 2006, L.A. County’s Health Services Department found a rat infestation on the property. It ordered Schollhammer, a professor at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, to eliminate the rats and close the openings to his house through which they entered. The Castellammare Mesa Homeowners Association said it received complaints about the infestation from neighbors and even people driving past the property. For Schollhammer’s next-door neighbor Vince Flaherty, a producer and 1980’s TV actor, the problem had become so bad that rats and ground squirrels burrowed underground into his cliff-side basement. “You can still smell the urine in the basement,” says Flaherty, who claims he spent more than $10,000 pouring concrete to fix the problem. “The only good thing about [the house] is that there’s nobody there, so we have privacy. But it’s such a blight on the neighborhood. People call it the abandoned Taco Bell.” Neighbors of Schollhammer even admit to offering to buy the property from him. “I live directly across the street,” says Cort Wagner, a Grand Am race-car driver. “It’s such an eyesore, and I have to look at it. I asked him how much he wanted and offered to write a check right there.” Schollhammer rejected Wagner’s offer and numerous others. The homeowners association contends that the professor has broken the due-diligence clause of its CC&Rs, which demands that construction be pursued diligently and continuously and within two years from its start. But the association, which only collects voluntary dues, has been wary of a long, expensive lawsuit, so it has turned to the city for help–with negligible results. Only after repeated efforts over several years has the city’s Building and Safety Department responded to Castellammare residents’ concerns, says Kim Clary, the association’s president. In June 2006, the city declared the building a ‘vacant structure’ that had violated several building codes. It ordered Schollhammer to waterproof the house and fix its “general dilapidation.” With few signs of progress at the house, the City Attorney took Schollhammer to court last January. There, the owner pledged to finish the house by January 2008. But even if he reneges, the city has little power. “As long as the property is kept clean and secure, there isn’t anything we can legally do to him,” said Frank Bush, the city’s chief building inspector. In other words, the city can’t force property owners to finish their houses. Despite Schollhammer’s new pledge, neighbors aren’t optimistic. That’s because the professor, who specializes in business ethics and intra-organizational conflict, has plowed through other deadlines before. In September 2004, he told the Canyon News that he hoped to complete construction within five months. And in February 2006 when the house was still incomplete, Schollhammer told the homeowners association that the house would be ready for occupancy by August 2006. That deadline came and went. “I don’t understand his motives,” says Cort Wagner, who lives across the street. “The real estate boom has come and gone.” (Still, nearby houses on the street were recently sold for $3 million and $7 million.) Schollhammer says his neighbors have unfairly blamed him for the delay, which he attributes to a series of unfortunate and uncontrollable events. He cites his contract with an “admittedly slow” contractor, Ralph Herman (the contractor rejects that characterization). He points to a series of vandalisms, which he insinuates his neighbors have caused. His windows have been smashed, rocks thrown on the roof and ‘dog feces smeared’ on his house’s walls. (Before Schollhammer began building his controversial home, he built and sold an adjacent house in the mid-1990s. That house, he says, was built on schedule–a fact he attributes, in part, to using a different contractor.) In April 2003, his nearly complete house was severely vandalized. In addition to breaking windows and the front door, someone flooded his and Flaherty’s house with a hose over a long weekend. To make things worse, says Schollhammer, the insurance company forced him to use a different contractor to repair the damage. The police never caught the wrongdoer, but they suspected Wagner. “The cops came over and named me as a suspect,” Wagner says. “I told them it doesn’t surprise me because I hate the house and despise [its] owner. But I told them if I had anything to do with it, I would have done much worse. I would have burned it [to] the ground!” Schollhammer says that vandalism in 2003 delayed construction by 18 months. This summer a drunk driver caused $11,000 of damage when he smashed through his fence and knocked off a corner of the house, Schollhammer says. But his neighbors reject his explanations. “So what!” Clary says. “These are all excuses. Even if some of these things are true, it shouldn’t have stopped him from completing it. And many of these events wouldn’t have occurred if [the house] had been completed and occupied.” Schollhammer’s contractor attributes much of the slow construction delay to the professor’s indecisiveness. “The whole house has been design-as-you-go,” Herman says. “It takes [Schollhammer and his wife] a long time to make a decision. They spend a lot of time deciding what color the stucco will be, what the door will look like, etc. And then sometimes, they change their minds. I’m not sure even he knows what to do.” According to the contractor, the house still lacks underground utility and site plans, which are needed for completion. Ten years into construction, both Schollhammer and his neighbors are embittered and resigned. “I would never want to live in this neighborhood,” says Schollhammer. “I’ve thought many times about letting someone else finish the house, but I have a contract.” For one of his neighbors living across the street, she’s stopped caring. “The thing that is really disconcerting to me is that I’ve had to call their contractor to push them as if I were the owner,” says the neighbor, who requested that her name be withheld. “I’m not wasting my time anymore. I’ve let my tree grow large, so I don’t have to see the place.” —– To contact Staff Writer Max Taves, e-mail reporter@palipost.com or call ext. 28.