Couple Cry Foul After Santa Ana Razes a House

A squabble over the fate of an 80-year-old Santa Ana home in the middle of a developing area on North Main Street ended Tuesday when city officials demolished the structure.

A Santa Ana couple, Mary Alcala and Mike Mitchell, who had hoped to purchase the home, cried foul, arguing that they had every intention of moving the house to their property on North King Street and refurbishing it. “Mike and I have shown good faith. We feel we’ve been treated unfairly,” Alcala said Wednesday.

But city officials said the couple had failed to sign a document that would indemnify the city from any liability on the house. After months of failed negotiations, City Manager Dave Ream said, the city decided it was no longer prudent or safe to leave the structure sitting on city property.

Reason for Demolition

“We gave them the house and they had to move it within a certain period of time,” Ream said.

Other city officials couldn’t be reached for comment Wednesday, but City Councilman John Acosta expressed disappointment at the decision to raze the house, which is included on the city’s list of historic structures. “This is shades of big brother kicking little brother all over the place,” he said. “It doesn’t look good in the community that we’re riding roughshod over some young couple that negotiated a deal with the city.”

The deal began when the City Council approved a high-rise office building for the southeast corner of Owens Drive and Main Street. There was no firm plan on what to do with the home, which sat on the property.

In stepped Alcala and Mitchell, offering to take the home and move it themselves. The city agreed, saying that the couple need only get adequate liability insurance, clean up the site and pay moving costs.

When the couple’s attempts to purchase one site in the city fell through, Ream said that they were allowed to move the home across Owens to city-owned property so that the office project could get under way. Santa Ana purchased that land in anticipation of widening Owens.

But when the home remained there for several months, the city threatened to raze it. Alcala said she would have moved it to her property but wouldn’t do so until the city gave her a receipt or some other document proving her ownership. She said she wouldn’t sign an agreement until she had the receipt in hand, adding that she had obtained insurance coverage up to $500,000.

Little Left on Property

All that mattered little Tuesday as Alcala argued her side at the site. Nothing was left on the property except tire tracks in the dirt and a few mover’s beams.

Ream, stressing that the city had been willing to give the couple the structure at minimal cost, said the potential liability was too great to wait any longer. For example, he said, what if a child broke into the home and was injured or a fire started and embers spread the flames to nearby structures?

Both Mitchell and Alcala said they would continue to look for another old home to refurbish but probably in some other city, noting that they had planned to sink at least $50,000 into the Owens Street home. The farmhouse-type dwelling, with four bedrooms, two bathrooms and about 2,800 square feet of floor space, was in good condition, Alcala said, and needed little electrical or plumbing work.

Their attorney, Thomas Nixon, said the matter may end up in court, although no decision has been made. So far, he said, the couple has spent about $9,000 for moving costs and cleanup of the original site, he said.

Legal Action Cited

Nixon said he believes that city officials may have been angered by the couple’s filing of a legal action to stop an earlier attempt to raze the home. He also said the city had attempted to add to their cost about $5,000 charged by a mover contracted earlier by Santa Ana.

“Some people seemed to develop kind of a personal antagonism toward her efforts to get the house relocated,” he said. “The destruction itself seems senseless.”

Acosta noted that the couple had asked the City Council for help a number of times, including last week, when the council agreed 6 to 1 that city staffers should try to work out some kind of compromise. The demolition came as a surprise to him, Acosta said.

“I think that somebody on the staff got a little upset that these people came to the council to seek help,” he said, adding that he feels the pair “ran up against the proverbial stone wall that we occasionally see in our system.”