Lawsuits for $53 Million End With $39,000 Repair

Repairs to an Agoura Hills town house project where allegations of shoddy construction prompted lawsuits asking $53 million in damages will cost a mere $39,000.

Workmen began shoring up sinking walls and cracked slabs at the 27-unit Westlake Villas condominiums Thursday. They plan to turn the problem-plagued project into an apartment house.

Builders, owners and Los Angeles County officials had argued about the repairs for more than 3 1/2 years, but the actual work will take only four weeks, according to those doing it.

The whine of a single concrete drill marked the end of the noisy dispute Thursday as workers from a Santee construction company began installing steel-reinforced concrete beams under the foundations of eight units.

The workers, whose firm specializes in structural underpinnings, also will replace garage slabs at seven units, the living-area slab at one unit and sidewalks outside 10 units.

A sagging wall that had been propped up last year by nervous occupants of the $100,000 units will be jacked up and restored to its original position, according to plans filed with the county by contractor Ned Clyde. His building permit carries the $39,000 price tag.

After the structural work is completed, town house developer Hilbert Chu of San Diego plans to repair roofs and make cosmetic improvements before renting the two-story dwellings, said Douglas Browne, chief of the county engineer’s building and safety office in Calabasas.

Chu, who reclaimed ownership of most of the units this year after residents sold them back to him as part of a lawsuit settlement, could not be reached for comment Thursday. But Browne said Chu told him that he will “monitor” the units after renting them before deciding whether to resell them as condominiums.

Structural inspections and soil tests conducted after residents accepted the buy-out offer in July showed that “the majority of the units had not experienced any traumatic damage and were habitable,” Browne said.

A substandard, shallow foundation has been blamed for the most serious and visible problem--the sagging garage wall beneath one unit. Because of the wall slippage, Browne last fall posted that unit as unsafe to enter.

“Structurally, it was not a major problem. It is certainly repairable,” he said of the unit on Thursday. “I posted it to get the builder’s attention. To the layman looking at it, it was very bad, visually. That was the result of generally poor workmanship at the site.”

The poor quality of construction led county officials in December to discipline a Calabasas-based building inspector who had been in charge of overseeing the $1.4-million condominium project in 1981 and 1982.

An embarrassed County Engineer Stephen J. Koonce said the inspector “was remiss in the performance of his duties” in overlooking the “hasty, makeshift, unprofessional” construction. Koonce put the inspector on six months’ probation and ordered tighter building-inspection procedures.

Leaks and cracked concrete and plaster that preceded the wall slippage prompted a series of lawsuits as Chu sued his contractors for $4.1 million in 1983. A group of homeowners sued Chu and the builders for $31.5 million a year later and a second group of homeowners sued for $17.5 million early this year.

The various claims were dropped in June when an out-of-court settlement, centered around the buy-back agreement, was reached. As part of the agreement, the original contractors’ insurance companies agreed to help Chu repurchase the condominiums. All but two of the owners have reportedly moved from the development since then.

But the $39,000 repair project drew scoffs Thursday from former condominium owner Diana Shulman, who has moved to a rental unit a few doors away from the Colodny Drive development.

“I wouldn’t move back in there. I know too much about what’s wrong with those units,” Shulman said of Westlake Villas. “The repairs they’re talking about are a joke. We sat down and figured that, conservatively, it would take $40,000 for every unit to fix them.

“I can only think that these repairs are going to be as shoddy as the original construction was.”