HUNTINGTON BEACH : Duplex Owner Gets Fix-Up Deadline

A vacant downtown duplex that neighbors say is a haven for transients will be demolished within a month unless its owner starts to fix the place up.

The City Council also told property owner Merle Cade that the refurbishing of the 1920s-era building at 211 Sixth St. must be finished by Aug. 27.

“This has just reached a breaking point,” said Michael Strange, a city senior planner. “ . . . The neighbors are adamant about getting the building demolished.”

Cade said that when he bought the duplex 15 years ago, it was a habitable, if aging, residence. In recent years, however, the building deteriorated, and Cade eventually removed the door and much of the front facing to prepare it for rehabilitation. Police say transients often take refuge in the duplex, and fires have broken out there twice in the last year.

Cade said he was reluctant to continue the improvements because the property was the subject of a dispute between him and his ex-wife. Their divorce became final last week. Cade now says that the refurbishment will begin immediately.

But annoyed neighbors say they have little patience with Cade’s explanations. The neighbors, many of whom own recently built homes near the aging duplex, claim that the building is a nuisance and should be demolished.

Cade’s son, Eric, who has taken over many of the management duties on his father’s properties, acknowledges that the building is a neighborhood problem.

“We do want to keep the building and restore it as a duplex,” he said. “We see that the city of Huntington Beach, with its (nearby) redevelopment project, is making an effort to clean up the area, and we want to do that, too.”