COSTA MESA : Irvine Co., Society Clash Over Home

The Irvine Co. has announced plans to tear down a house that James Harvey Irvine Jr. built more than 50 years ago.

And the Irvine Historical Society is up in arms about it.

“It’s hard to imagine that in 50,000 acres of developable land that there’s not one place that can be set aside for the protection of the home,” said society member Judy Liebeck.

The demolition of the little ranch house, badly battered, torn apart by vandals and littered with broken glass, will be discussed at Tuesday’s City Council meeting. The house is scheduled to be razed because it stands in the way of the widening of Interstate 5.

Those involved in what has become a messy battle over the home are all blaming each other for the pending destruction of the historic structure.

The Irvine Co. said the Irvine Historical Society was supposed to move the house six months ago.

“In the past months we’ve made every attempt to cooperate with the Irvine Historical Society by extending the time limits for over one year,” said Kathleen Campini, company spokeswoman.

Campini said that under the terms of an agreement completed July 14, 1988, between the city and the society, the company gave the society the house with the condition that the structure be moved in 60 days.

The society failed to do so, Campini said.

“We gave them a time limit, extended time limit, and during this time period the condition of the home has deteriorated and the home has been exposed to continued vandalism,” Campini said.

The city agrees that the Historical Society is to blame for the home’s planned demolition.

“The Irvine Historical Society hasn’t been fully cooperative in finding an amicable solution,” said Paul Brady, city manager. “I just want them to meet us halfway on finding financial resources to relocate the buildings.”

But the Historical Society’s president said the group has no place to put the home, and neither the Irvine Co. nor the city have helped to find a suitable location.

“The city has assumed no responsibility for historical preservation,” said society President Ed Portmann. “(The Irvine Co.) has given us the home, and they feel that ends their responsibility.”

Finding funds to move the house is not the problem, Portman said. The society simply has no place to put the home, he said.

“We are asking them (the city) to take over this responsibility,” Portmann said.

The little structure, nestled beneath a shady stand of trees and surrounded by a white picket fence, has stood as one of the county’s precious few links to its agricultural past.

Athalie Clarke, 86, widow of James Irvine’s son, James (Jase) Irvine, never lived in the little ranch house, which was completed just after Irvine died in 1935. Clarke and her husband spent their six years of married life in the family mansion a few miles away.