LAGUNA BEACH : City Blocks Home in Shadow Dispute

Plans for a hillside home rejected by the city’s Design Review Board partly because the home would cast a shadow on a neighbor’s house were rebuffed by the City Council despite an emotional appeal Tuesday night by the property owners.

Two council members, Ann Christoph and Martha Collison, sided with Eugene and Meredith Gratz during the contentious 2 1/2-hour session, but most said the 4,950-square-foot home was still too big and would not approve it.

The hearing raged until midnight as residents on both sides of the issue hurled accusations back and forth. Council members expressed concern at the tone of the debate and the events that led the Gratzes through nine public hearings.

“I am literally sickened by this evening,” said Lida Lenney. “I have never had that happen to me as a City Council member before, but I am sick to my stomach.”

The Gratzes insist that the city misled them and offered false hope that their plans would be approved. All of it, they say, has placed them in a position where they might lose the property they can no longer afford.

Other residents accused the Gratzes of using “intimidation” and “big city tactics” to secure approval for a home that is too big for the neighborhood.

The Gratzes, whose property is on Temple Hills Drive, are suing Dan McFarland, owner of a neighboring property and the most vocal opponent of their project, for trespassing and slander. They are considering a lawsuit against the city.

Eugene Gratz, an attorney, is also representing Nick and Denise Karagozian in a $1-million lawsuit against the city. The Karagozians were refused permission to move into their new home last year because they had painted it white instead of “sandstone,” a color approved by the city. They are now living in the house, but proceeding with the suit.

A friend of the Gratzes read a letter Tuesday night from Eugene Gratz’s elderly father, who is waiting in New York for the new home to be built so he can return to Laguna to live with his son and daughter-in-law.

“Your home is for your family,” Georgina Sullender said in support of the Gratzes. “These precious folks have a father they would like to be with before he’s gone.”

But McFarland, who has lived in the house downhill from the Gratzes’ property since 1935, pleaded for council support in blocking the project, which he said would shade his 1,200-square-foot home, a dwelling he has already attempted to brighten by adding four skylights. “They were determined to build a very big house no matter what it did to the neighborhood,” he said.

A solar expert hired by the Gratzes, however, said his client’s home would shade the McFarland residence for only a few hours a day during November and December. “The question becomes: What is reasonable?” John Stebbins said. “I don’t really understand what the big deal is.”

Chris Able, president of the Architectural Guild of Laguna Beach, said members of the group have offered to work with the city and the Gratzes to shape a compromise that would allow the couple to build a smaller home.

But Meredith Gratz was not interested in re-entering the design review process, which she says has drained her and her husband financially. Neither is she willing to concede defeat.

“I’m not going to sit by and watch my property rights be taken away,” she said.

“Somewhere in the process people forgot we were citizens.”