Beglaris Again Ordered to Vacate Home

Within 24 hours of an Orange County judge’s finding that there is “probable cause” that the City of Los Angeles is “in contempt” regarding its handling of a controversial case in Rustic Canyon, the Department of Building and Safety revoked the building permits and certificate of occupancy at 909 Greentree and ordered all work stopped at 921 Greentree, two doors down the street. Both properties are owned by Mehr and Vickey Beglari, who have been embroiled in a five-year battle with several neighbors who filed suit in Superior Court in May against both the couple, the City of L. A. and its Department of Building and Safety for failure to comply with a Court of Appeal order issued in April 2005. At that time, the court called for the building permits and certificate of occupancy to be revoked, as well as a portion of the Beglaris’ principal residence at 909 Greentree Rd. to be demolished. However, it took the City nine months to issue the order to comply. Finally on January 5, Building and Safety ordered the Beglaris to vacate their residence at 909 by February 20. The Beglaris were also ordered to either demolish the house or “submit plans and obtain approvals to remodel the home to comply with the required front yard setbacks, height and all other requirements of the Los Angeles building code.” Building and Safety then rescinded the order on February 7, to the surprise of the neighbors. According to public records, a request was submitted to the department by the Beglaris asking the department to “reinstate building permits to document correct prevailing setbacks, ” which the department did. Exactly what that entailed was unknown at the time. What was known is that the existing house was 14 feet closer to the street (Greentree) than permitted by the governing sections of the Los Angeles Municipal Code. The Beglaris had obtained a building permit in January 2001 to build a 6,550-sq.-ft., two-story addition to their existing 2,000-sq.-ft. ranch-style house at 909 Greentree Rd. Their problem began in April of that year when they started excavating the front of their 10,000-sq.-ft. lot to build an underground garage. The neighbors thought the Beglaris were digging too close to the curb and suspected that the setback was not in accordance with the municipal code. In October 2002, Associate Zoning Administrator Lourdes Green concluded that not only did the setback violate code but that Building and Safety had erred in calculating the “prevailing” front-yard setback for the Beglari house’which was measured from the Beglaris’ next-door neighbor’s detached garage to the curb, instead of from the neighbor’s house to the curb, as required by law. However, the City Planning Commission overruled Green in February 2003. The legal wrangling on both sides finally ended last spring, with the Court of Appeal ordering Building and Safety to revoke all permits issued to the Beglaris, as well as their 2002 certificate of occupancy. The neighbors were elated until they discovered in early February that Building and Safety had not only rescinded the order but reinstated the Beglaris’ building permits “to reflect the revised front-yard prevailing setback based on the current circumstances.” Even more startling was the revelation that the “revised” setback that allowed for the reinstatement had nothing to do with the Beglaris’ residence at 909 Greentree’the subject of the protracted dispute’but from a property the couple owns at 921 Greentree, two doors down the street. There, the couple built a 5-foot addition to the front of the three-bedroom, two-bath ranch-style house they purchased in 2004. The addition’which was attached to the chimney and consisted of a sloped composite roof supported by two wood pillars (four-by-fours)’not only served the purpose of decreasing the house’s setback from the street, but, in doing so, altered the “prevailing” setback for the entire block’which consists of four residences. “The addition at 921 Greentree is built to code, and even though it extends out five feet beyond the house, there is still enough distance between the addition and the curb to comply with the required front-yard setback for this property,” Building and Safety spokesman Bob Steinbach told the Palisadian-Post in February. What surprised neighbor John Rosenfeld about the February ruling was how the city now appeared to have” inappropriately altered one setback to try and justify what is their obvious blunder on another.” Then in May, the Beglaris demolished the canopy and the house at 921 Greentree and had started construction on a 7,000 sq-ft. house on the lot before Friday’s stop work order was issued. Charging all three parties with engaging in a “subterfuge,” the neighbors, who have to date spent close to $500,000, are questioning in their latest suit why it took Building and Safety nine months to finally order the Beglaris to comply. “It is impossible to review these facts without coming to the conclusion that respondents [the City] and Beglari engaged in a willful scheme… to violate a binding decision by the Court of Appeal,” the neighbors stipulate in the May filing. The Beglaris’ response was that they had, in their view, acted both “legally and properly” in submitting new permit applications “based on new circumstances,” an argument which was rejected by Judge David C. Velasquez, who in an unusual move ordered Andrew A. Adelman, head of Building and Safety since 1997, to answer to the contempt charges at a hearing set for July 13. “Everything is on hold until we hear what the court has to say,” Steinbach told the Post on Tuesday.