Condo Fight Is Over, but Not Controversy

A tangled legal fight over a waterfront condominium complex in Huntington Harbour has ended, but controversy about the development lingers on.

The subject of the controversy is the Huntington Harbour Bay Club condos on Warner Avenue near Pacific Coast Highway. For more than a year, some nearby residents of Huntington Harbour have criticized the new $18-million building, charging in a lawsuit that its construction violated state and local laws.

The suit accused Coultrup Development Co. of building the condos over an earthquake fault and on land that had a state public easement on it. An Orange County Superior Court and a state Court of Appeal both dismissed the case. The residents then appealed to the state Supreme Court.

On Thursday, Jonathan Lehrer-Graiwer, the attorney for the challengers to the project, confirmed that the state Supreme Court earlier this month refused to hear the case.

“It’s all finished,” Lehrer-Graiwer said. He added that the legal fight can proceed no further. “I’m very disappointed,” he said.

Despite the end of the legal suit, political controversy about the case continued this week. At the Monday night meeting of the City Council, Councilman Don MacAllister said the city should “waste no more time” investigating citizen accusations against the condo project.

But Councilwoman Grace Winchell, in rebuttal, said city government had made errors in giving permission for the project. She said the city approved the project despite conflicting information about the location of an earthquake fault near the construction site. (State law, called the Alquist-Priolo Act, forbids residential construction within 50 feet of an active earthquake fault.)

Winchell said she was also concerned that “staff did not pursue” questions about whether the condo project was being built on land on which the state had an easement. She also criticized staff follow-up on the project, saying the finished building did not meet some specifications the city laid down.

MacAllister, however, noted that courts at all levels had rejected legal complaints about the condo complex. He moved that the council drop the issue, and the motion passed, 4-3.

Voting against the motion were Winchell, Councilwoman Linda Moulton-Patterson and Councilman Peter M. Green. MacAllister, Mayor Jim Silva and Councilmen Earle Robitaille and Jack Kelly supported the move to halt any more city action on the condo issue.

On Thursday, Barbara Devlin, one of the Huntington Harbour residents who filed the lawsuit, said she was “very disappointed” that the Supreme Court refused to hear the case. She said a major public safety issue was involved in the case.

Jon Coultrup, head of the company which managed the condo complex’s development, issued a statement Thursday saying the courts had “completely vindicated” the project.

“We are pleased to finally see the end of this,” Coultrup said. “We knew from the first lawsuit they filed that their claims were totally without merit, that our project is well planned and well suited to the community. . . . It’s unfortunate that a few could create such a controversy when none exists.”