Agoura Hills Will Do Most Adobe Repairs Itself

The long-planned restoration of Agoura Hills’ oldest house, the 189-year-old Reyes Adobe, will be a do-it-yourself project, city officials have decided.

City Council members rejected a pair of bids for the renovation Tuesday night after learning that two outside contractors had offered to rebuild sagging adobe brick walls and install a new electrical system for $216,800 and $230,200, respectively.

Officials had estimated that the work will cost about $140,000.

City Manager Michael W. Huse said the city will use its own workers for most of the reconstruction and will subcontract parts of the project to outside workers only when necessary. He said officials will hire a private general contractor as project superintendent.

Huse said the adobe will be opened to the public as a local museum when the repairs are completed next spring.

The mud-walled ranch house, which has been remodeled and enlarged several times since its construction in 1797, is next to a city park that is surrounded by single-family homes. It is a few hundred yards north of the Ventura Freeway at Reyes Adobe Road.

Originally, the adobe was the headquarters for the 17,000-acre Rancho las Virgenes, the smallest of the Spanish land grants in California.

Huse said Agoura Hills has set aside $153,000 in community block grant funds to finance the work.