Suit Threatens Condos With Demolition : * Appeal: Neighbors say units are built on quake fault and must be razed. The builder accuses them of ‘terroristic tactics.’

A new luxury condominium gleams in the sun of posh Huntington Harbour, reflecting the water of a tranquil marina, but it is embroiled in a sea of controversy.

Coultrup Development Co. of Seal Beach proudly ticks off the qualities of its multimillion-dollar units, which went on sale this summer starting at just less than $400,000. But if some neighbors have their way, it will all be destroyed, smashed by a wrecking crew to comply with a safety law.

Opponents have filed a lawsuit, which has drawn statewide interest, alleging that the Huntington Harbour Bay Club condominium at 4165-67 Warner Ave. violates state law because it is built over an earthquake fault.

“Safety is involved,” said Barbara Devlin, a Huntington Harbour resident who is among those joined in the lawsuit. “The state of California says you can’t build over an earthquake fault. I think the law must be obeyed.”

As the condominium units are being occupied, however, developers angered by the suit insist that their project is not dangerous.

“This a very safe building,” said Jon Coultrup, managing partner for the project. “It’s been studied and restudied. The building is properly set back and is not over an active fault. I don’t think anything in the harbor has been built this well.”

Coultrup also deplored what he called the opponents’ “terroristic tactics” and asserted that “only a few people are involved” in challenging the 36-unit structure, which still announces its grand opening with a giant banner.

Three people--Devlin, Joseph Scheitzach and John Kerkes--are plaintiffs in the suit, but Devlin said hundreds more harbor residents support it. “We had a petition signed by 500 residents,” she said.

Initially, the dispute between residents and the condo proposal centered on aesthetics. Foes do not like the four-story height of the building, saying it ruins their harbor views. But as the battle went on, the fault issue was raised.

The Newport-Inglewood Fault passes underneath the Huntington Harbour area. Most homes in the area were built before 1973, when a state law forbade construction near an active fault.

The issues raised in the 18-month-old lawsuit reach well beyond the affluent homes and yachts of Huntington Harbour, because legislators in Sacramento believe that the Coultrup case could have ramifications elsewhere.

“We see this case in Huntington Harbour as being a possible precedent,” said Chris Lindstrom, administrative assistant to Sen. Alfred E. Alquist (D-San Jose). “We see the case as possibly showing us where more teeth are needed in the Alquist-Priolo Act.”

That law forbids construction of buildings within 50 feet of an active earthquake fault.

“No case (stemming from the Alquist-Priolo Act) that I know of has ever before resulted in a building having to be torn down,” Lindstrom said. “This is among the interesting things that might come up in the Huntington Harbour case. Some prominent issues are being raised.”

The lawsuit is before the 4th District Court of Appeal in Santa Ana after a Superior Court decision in February in favor of the developers.

“We won in the lower court, and the appeal will be heard in a few months, and then the issue will be put to bed forever,” Coultrup said.

But Jonathan Lehrer-Graiwer, a Los Angeles lawyer representing the opponents, predicted that the appeals court will reverse the ruling.

He said the city government could be forced to order the condos torn down.

“This case has acquired a much more serious character than the original land-use dispute between local residents and a developer,” Lehrer-Graiwer said in the documents to the appeals court. “This case now raises issues of statewide importance concerning the general public interest and the welfare and personal safety of residents of the area and future residents of the subject project.”

Geology is a key issue in the case. Condo foes quote experts who say the new building lies over part of the fault. But Coultrup’s attorneys respond with experts who say the condo is safely outside the fault area.

Huntington Beach’s city government is a defendant in the suit. It has already acknowledged one mistake regarding the location of the fault area relative to the project.

In July, 1990, Huntington Beach Community Development Director Mike Adams told the City Council that engineers had determined that “the seismic setback area . . . was plotted incorrectly” for the condos. As a result, Adams said, one edge of the building would be built in an area that the Alquist-Priolo state law requires as a safety setback from a fault.

If the city halts the project, Adams said, the developer might sue the city. He recommended that the City Council reapprove the condo project and require the parts of the building that overlap the earthquake setback be fortified to keep the project from violating state law.

By a 5-2 vote, the council last year approved that requirement. Mayor Peter M. Green and Councilwoman Grace Winchell cast the dissenting votes.

“It became more and more evident that this land (for the condo project) had geologic problems, being near the Newport-Inglewood Fault,” Winchell said.

“To me this was not only an incompatible land use, with all the density they were putting in that area, but as the story unfolded I had questions about the location of the fault,” she said. “I never was completely satisfied that we had an answer to the location of the fault.”

Another critic of the Coultrup project is Debbie Cook, spokeswoman for Save Our Parks, an environmental group based in Huntington Beach. She accused the city’s government of being so biased in favor of developers that it failed to research the Coultrup project sufficiently.

“This is a travesty of justice, and the city should be exposed for this crime,” Cook said.

She said city staff members, among other things, did not check whether coastal land being developed by Coultrup was covered by a state easement, which could prevent or limit the building.

Leslie H. Grimes, a land-management official with the State Lands Commission in Sacramento, said that the Coultrup property does have a state tidelands easement, or right of way, on it and that the state has not yielded that right of way.

But Coultrup disagreed, saying the land was long ago cleared from a state tidelands easement by the land company that first developed Huntington Harbour in the 1960s.

The question of whether the state has a tidelands easement on the land is among the thorny issues in the appeal. No date has been scheduled, but Lehrer-Graiwer said he expects the appeal to be heard in November. In the meantime, Devlin and other Huntington Harbour residents are pressuring the city.

At the City Council meeting last week, Devlin and Marti Klarin noted that just last month a Los Angeles community college’s officials voluntarily agreed to tear down the only permanent building on campus because it is not safe from earthquakes. They had found out that it had been built over part of the Newport-Inglewood Fault.

Devlin said the community college “has decided to obey the law and take down a building . . . rather than risk disaster, while the city of Huntington Beach, on the other hand, has decided to risk disaster and assume the liability problems.”

Devlin also vowed never to quit in the fight against the condo.

“It’s really a moral issue with me at this point,” she said.