Seeing Triple : Neighbors Detect Hidden Design, So Builder Is Stopped

There were no two ways about it to residents of the Reseda neighborhood.

The residence being built at Calvert Street and Yolanda Avenue was like no other in their 30-year-old community of single-family homes.

It had three fireplaces. And three air conditioner-heater units. Three washer-dryer rooms. Three kitchens. Three bathrooms. Three entrances. Three covered parking areas.

“As we watched it take shape, we could see it had three of everything,” said Preston Conley, who lives across the street from the new house. “It looked like a three-unit apartment to us.”

It looked the same way to Los Angeles city building inspectors when the homeowners asked them to re-examine building plans the city had approved for the single-family zoned lot last year.

City officials ordered developer Sidney Grobstein to immediately halt construction of his nearly finished $225,000 project, which includes two buildings--a main house and separate “cabana.”

This week, the city’s Board of Zoning Appeals voted 4 to 0 to require Grobstein to rip out the extra facilities and rebuild the structure as a one-family home.

At the same time, Department of Building and Safety officials disclosed that they are taking precautions to prevent similar slip-ups.

City officials said they are showing plans for Grobstein’s three-way house to city building inspectors as a case study in how some structures can easily and illegally be converted into multifamily units. Inspectors are being instructed to reject such plans, said Tim Taylor, manager of the Department of Building and Safety’s San Fernando Valley district.

“I frankly was quite amazed to see the permit had been issued on those plans,” Taylor said. “The cabana’s ‘Ping-Pong area’ was really a carport with a driveway. To me, it was quite obvious the designer and owner clearly planned to use it as three houses. It was the most obvious thing I’ve ever seen.”

‘Designed for Grandchildren’

When he appeared before the Board of Zoning Appeals on Tuesday to plead for his project, Grobstein denied that that was his intent.

“I designed this house because I have grandchildren,” he told the board. “It was permitted and built, and now we have to live with it.”

What inspectors saw as kitchens are only wet bars for entertaining, he said. The bedroom-sized room in the backyard cabana is a billiards room, he said, and the cabana itself is strictly a recreational structure.

“I don’t see why I should have to spend money to tear it down on somebody’s whim. I’m allowed to have a cabana. Well, that’s what it is,” he told the board.

Board Chairman Joseph Mandel replied that the city would not “quibble over semantics.”

When architect Peggy Cochrane explained that she “had absolutely no trouble getting a permit” from the city for the structure, Mandel shrugged that “people do make mistakes.”

Averting Problem Again

Taylor said Thursday that he hopes it is the last such mistake his city staff makes.

“We hope they’re more alerted to the problem,” he said. “We talked to the person who issued the permit and we gave a lecture to the entire staff and used the plan as an example.”

According to Taylor, the Reseda case is unusual in that “it came to our attention not from our inspection division but from a neighborhood complaint.” Besides, most illegal conversions of homes into multifamily structures involve minor alterations to the structures, perhaps the addition of one bathroom, he said.

Grobstein now faces “a major renovation . . . a lot of physical work” to convert the residence into a single-family home, Taylor said.