CYPRESS : Log Cabin Dream Now a Nightmare

When Leo Black found a great deal on some logs a couple years ago, he bought them and set his heart on building a log cabin in a bucolic setting on the Central California coast.

But after the real estate deal fell through and the logs sat idle in his driveway, he found himself mired in less-than-tranquil circumstances, facing angry neighbors and a pending court order to get rid of his logs.

“There’s not much I can do about it,” said Black, who placed advertisements to sell the logs in local newspapers Tuesday morning. “If I can’t sell them in 14 days, I’m just going to cut them up and try to sell them for firewood.”

About 2 1/2 years ago Black, a 20-year resident of Cypress, bought the lumber from a shipping company in Wilmington, paying $3,500 for the log cabin kit. He says the kit included everything needed to build a log cabin, except for the roof, windows and door.

At the same time, he was trying to buy property near Lake Santa Margarita near San Luis Obispo. It seemed a perfect match, with the land almost bought and the cabin kit in hand.

“I could put it together myself, that’s my business,” said Black, an electrical contractor employed by De Maria Electric in Wilmington. “I can do it with my hands. It’s no problem.”

But when the property sale fell through, problems mounted.

For six months, Black ignored orders from the city of Cypress to remove the logs from his driveway, where they had been declared a public nuisance. On Monday, he appealed to the City Council to allow him to keep the 12-foot logs until January, when he said he would be able to move them.

That motion was denied. Now, he has 14 days to remove the logs or face a court order allowing the city to remove them and send the bill to him.

“I can’t afford to pay the city, there’s no telling what they’ll charge me,” said Black, 34. “I’m a single parent with three kids; I can’t afford to take time off and haul them up north.”

According to the city Planning Department, the logs violate the public nuisance ordinance of the city code.

So now, Black says, he has no choice but to sell the logs and hope to break even while he laments the way his neighbors and the city have handled the situation.

Eight complaint letters have been sent to the city since April; however, none of the neighbors involved could be reached for comment.

“I think the worst thing about it was there was this big sign in the yard, ‘Public Nuisance,’ ” Black said. “I felt really degraded.”

Black considers himself a good citizen.

He coaches boys’ soccer for a city team every weekday and helps neighbors with their electrical problems when they need him. For the past 10 years he has lived in his one-story house on the cul-de-sac of New Mexico Lane, and for seven years before that, he lived directly across the street. He maintains his garden and trims his lawn just as neighbors do, he said, and has never complained when another neighbor’s front yard was not up to par.

“It seems kind of strange,” he said of his neighbors’ complaints. “I thought we were friends.”

He said he is trying not to mourn too heavily the loss of his dream of a log cabin in the country. Originally from Utah, Black called himself “kind of a country boy at heart” who knows that someday he will be “someplace where there’s mountains and it snows.”