Owners Claim Condos Are ‘Money Pit’ : Panorama City: Residents’ suit charges Tobias Chateaux are defect-ridden and should not have been approved by Los Angeles inspectors.
The sales brochure for the new Tobias Chateaux townhomes boasted of gourmet kitchens, spacious walk-in closets, dramatic nine-foot-high ceilings and “exteriors of charm and beauty.”
It was 1990 and the slowdown in the local housing market had begun, but the 12 Tobias Chateaux units sold quickly for about $160,000 each.
Today, homeowners at the Panorama City condominium project say that their dream homes have turned out to be dangerous, defect-ridden money pits. When it rains, the units flood. The floors sag and creak. Outside walkways have collapsed several inches and are no longer level. Fire hazards are everywhere, say experts hired by the homeowners.
“Sometimes when there’s an earthquake, you feel like you’re going to go right through the floor,” said Clementine Robertson, a 38-year-old nurse who, along with her neighbors, is suing the developer.
Shoddily built real estate projects are hardly unique. In the breakneck home-buying days of the 1980s, some builders racing to finish developments took short cuts. Kaufman & Broad Home Corp., the state’s largest home builder, has been the target of several homeowner lawsuits in recent years alleging substandard construction, and has paid out millions of dollars in fines and settlement costs.
Even so, Tobias Chateaux is startling in the extent of the problems alleged by the homeowners. Monty Jong, the city engineer who approved the original plans for Tobias Chateaux, said he would never allow the type of construction used in the flooring. Joe Russell, a contractor hired by the homeowners to investigate the construction problems, contends that the complex is so poorly built that it should be condemned.
“I’ve been pounding nails for 25 years,” said Russell. “This is the worst building I’ve ever seen.”
Named in the suit along with the project’s developer and general contractor, Clyde Mellies of North Hollywood, are architect Jack Levinson, several subcontractors and Mellies’ daughter, Debbie, who owns one of the units but has moved out.
Mellies denied the allegations. He maintained that aside from a few minor problems, the building is “very sound and strong.”
In 1973, Mellies’ contractor’s license was suspended for 15 days for poor workmanship, violations of building laws and failure to comply with the contract for construction of a North Hollywood house.
But most of the Tobias Chateaux homeowners’ wrath is reserved for the Los Angeles Building and Safety Department, which approved the project.
“Who’s protecting the consumer?” asked Janet Mikami, a 33-year-old teacher who lives at Tobias Chateaux with her husband, Sam Weinstein, 37, also a teacher.
The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court in March, initially named the city as a defendant. But it was dropped from the suit, said David M. Orbach, the plaintiffs’ attorney, because the city has a shield of immunity from such complaints. Still named in the suit, however, are Jong, the city engineer, and the principal city inspector for the project, Robert Kline.
The complaint alleges breach of contract, negligence and fraud, and asks for unspecified damages.
One of the project’s most serious flaws, the suit contends, is in the level of the floor and ceiling between the first floor and the subterranean parking. Instead of concrete, the builder installed a thin layer of plywood and a 5/8-inch sheet of drywall laid over the floor joists.
Russell and Ray Steinberg--a structural engineer and former building department plan checker who has also been hired by the homeowners--said that they have never heard of such a building technique. Drywall, which consists of a thin core of plaster of Paris covered with heavy paper, is commonly used in walls but isn’t considered sturdy enough for floors, they said.
What’s more, pipes for carrying water away from the building were not properly installed--and in some cases, not installed at all--Russell said. As a result, the drywall is wet and rotting, and inside the condos the floors are spongy, sloped and buckling.
Another major problem, Russell said, is that electrical wires have been laid over the floor joists, rather than in the walls or through a conduit. “That’s a big no-no,” he said, noting that when the floors were installed above, workmen could easily have driven nails through the wires. Now, when residents walk on top of the floor joists, the wires become split and worn.
This is made even more dangerous because the fire walls in the parking level--which are meant to keep a fire from moving from one unit to the next--have holes in them, which would allow a fire to spread quickly, Russell said. Worse still, he said, the building’s fire sprinkler system was never hooked up.
Among the other problems cited by the plaintiffs: Plumbing fixtures were never strapped in place to prevent them from coming loose, rattling and eventually wearing out; the exterior walls are not properly waterproofed, and on the perimeter of the building the sidewalks are collapsing because the soil was not compacted. Barbecues, sandboxes and benches were promised but never installed.
Mellies said the original plans for the floors called for a 1 1/2-inch layer of concrete and a 5/8-inch layer of plywood. But he claimed that Jong, the city engineer, insisted on the drywall method in order to meet fire safety requirements, a contention Jong denies. “I’ve never seen anything like that,” Jong said. “It is a code violation, definitely. It would never get approved.”
Mellies insisted that the fire sprinklers were working when the building was completed, but suggested that transients living in vacant houses across the street stole the handles and caps on the system, rendering it inoperable. He contended that the electrical wiring was safe, the soil was properly compacted and said that he tried to fix the leaks and flooding problems until the homeowners hired an attorney.
The lawsuit isn’t Mellies’ only worry. He is currently charged with two felony counts of selling and possessing for sale more than 28.5 grams of cocaine, and is due to be arraigned on Jan. 15. If convicted, he faces a minimum of two years in state prison.
Mellies, who served 10 months in prison on a drug possession conviction in 1980, maintains he is innocent of the current charges. “I wound up in the wrong place at the wrong time,” he said. “Somebody got busted and I happened to be there.”
Mellies blamed the Tobias Chateaux lawsuit on a few disgruntled homeowners who have incited the others. But one of Mellies’ co-defendants, Richard M. Ramirez, the owner of California Geo/Systems Inc., offered a different account from Mellies.
Ramirez said he did some initial soil testing at the site but Mellies never called him back to finish the testing and do the final compaction report. “The city of L.A. should not have finalized the project,” he said.
Levinson, the architect, declined to comment. The electrical subcontractor, Bernard Kagan, maintained that the wiring on the project was safe. “It has all been inspected,” he said.
Kline, the city inspector, is on leave and could not be reached for comment. David Lara, who replaced Kline as principal inspector in the San Fernando Valley, said he was not familiar with the project but had never heard of an approved installation with the type of drywall flooring used at Tobias Chateaux.
City building inspectors came under fire by Mayor Tom Bradley recently for another problem-plagued project, a youth center in Pacoima. That building, which a private structural engineer found to be unsafe and in danger of collapsing during an earthquake or high winds, is to be rebuilt.
The Tobias Chateaux homeowners, meanwhile, say they’re traumatized. Weinstein said he has been so depressed that he gets sick frequently and has missed a few weeks of work.
Like their neighbors, Nereyda Cornejo and Oscar Rivera, both 31, said they didn’t hire an independent inspector when they purchased their unit because the building was new and they assumed any problems would have been discovered by city inspectors. Now, they said, they can’t sell because they would have to disclose the defects to a potential buyer.
“What we have here is a big lemon,” Cornejo said. “A very costly lemon.”
Times staff writer Tracey Kaplan contributed to this story.
