Landmark Restaurant Prepares to Rise From the Ashes of Arson

Comedian Bob Hope could often be found sitting at the bar.

Other locals loved it for its sweeping vista of the northeast San Fernando Valley.

The Castaway restaurant, a 31-year-old, city-owned landmark perched high up in the Verdugo Hills, also drew Burbank-based companies such as the Walt Disney Co., NBC and Lockheed for get-togethers in nearby banquet rooms.

“People would come and sip a pina colada, listen to a song and warm their hands on a furnace,” recalled Rod Westmaas, director of catering for The Castaway’s banquet center. “More than a restaurant, it was an institution. When the fire went up, many said many dreams and memories went up in smoke.”

Today, meeting rooms and a fenced-off pile of debris surrounded by palm trees are all that remain of the restaurant, which was destroyed last summer by an arsonist still at large.

But the restaurant’s operators hope to begin rebuilding in July with about $2.2 million in insurance proceeds and to reopen for business in December.

In the meantime, two large banquet rooms next to the restaurant are still functional, serving as the sites for weddings, company parties and high school proms.

“We’re not up to our former strength yet, but we’ve come back strong,” Westmaas said.

When it is resurrected, the hilltop restaurant will look much as it did before from the inside--an island retreat.

This time, however, there will be a sprinkler system, an indoor waterfall, a higher ceiling, larger bathrooms, an exterior made of rough cedar and a lobby three times the original size.

“To me, it needed a face lift badly. The toilets were an embarrassment as far as I was concerned,” said Ron Weil, director of design for Specialty Restaurants Corp., an Anaheim-based company which leases The Castaway from the city.

The company hoped to expand from about 14,000 square feet to about 18,000.

But complaints from nearby residents who worry about increased driving to and from the hilltop have forced corporation President David Tallichet to consider a more limited expansion.

Plans to expand the restaurant by 1,100 square feet were presented Tuesday to the Burbank City Council but council members, still uncertain of the environmental impacts on neighbors, voted 4-0 to continue a public hearing on the issue to June 21.

The June 29 fire resulted in more than $1 million in damage to the site. There still have been no suspects caught, despite a $10,000 reward offered by Specialty Restaurants Corp.

Some people living near The Castaway, such as Esther Christoffersen, have been grateful for the decreased noise and traffic ever since.

“Since The Castaway has gone in, the traffic has been horrendous,” said Christoffersen, 74, who has lived on Harvard Road since 1949. “We can’t sleep in our front bedroom because of the noise. It has just destroyed a quiet neighborhood.

“If I had my druthers, I’d like to not see it rebuilt. We have enjoyed having the quietness of our street back again.”

The fire forced most of the 200 people who worked at The Castaway restaurant and banquet center into the job market again. Some have coped well; others have not.

“I guess I felt the pain of many employees who lost their job,” Westmaas said. “One individual, a cocktail server, said her whole life was shot. Her whole psyche is out of whack.

“I’d prefer not to believe it was an employee or a former employee (who started the fire). But you can never rule anything out.”